The Battle of Second Manassas

Between August 25 and 29, 1862, General Lee and John Pope maneuvered
for position across the Manassas Plain, Lee taking the initiative and Pope
reacting. The challenge for Pope in this dynamic process was to recognize the
viable options available to Lee as the maneuvering progressed and to counter
with effective distribution of his forces, to either induce Lee to retreat or
engage him in a way that preserved the status quo long enough for the remainder
of McClellan’s army―Franklin’s and Sumner’s Corps, plus Couch’s division
of Keyes’s corps―to come up. But Pope was unable to do this, because his
ego would not accept being seen as “saved” by McClellan. He wanted to be seen
as driving Lee back with the force he had at hand, and this attitude
doomed him to professional disgrace.

Second Manassas Overview
Youtube Channel JoeRyanCivilWar

The Theater of
Operations

Maps by Ken Reid

Union General
George B. McClellan

Through the first three weeks of August 1862, General Lee
continued to move his army northward, following the left bank of the
Rappahannock with Pope’s newly formed Army of Virginia matching the movement by
moving north on the right bank. By August 25, Lee had reached the sector
between Amissville and Jeffersonton with Pope covering the sector from the Rappahannock Railroad Bridge to Waterloo Bridge on the road to Warrenton. Here, with a
rain storm brewing in the Blue Ridge Mountains, guaranteeing a rise in the
river, Lee crossed the river at Sulpher Springs with two brigades, the brigades
taking position behind Great Run. Pope reacted to this move by vectoring his
scattered corps toward Great Run. Lee pulled the brigades back just as Pope was
gearing Sigel’s corps for an attack.

At this point, reports from Pope’s cavalry scouts (Buford)
informed him that Stonewall Jackson, with three divisions―A.P. Hill’s,
Richard Ewell’s, and Jackson’s own division, commanded now by Taliaferro―were
moving through Orlean toward Salem, a point on the Manassas Gap Railroad west
of the Bull Run Mountains. Pope’s initial reaction to this information was
undoubtedly the correct one: He ordered Franz Sigel to cross the Rappahannock at Sulpher Springs and Waterloo Bridge and engage Lee’s forces in the Amissville
sector. Irvin McDowell’s corps would support him. Instead, Sigel merely sent a
brigade across the river and barraged the hills around Jeffersonton with
artillery fire.

Sigel’s conduct, encouraged by McDowell’s
reluctance to support him, illustrated John Pope’s essential problem throughout
the Manassas Campaign: He did not have control of his command structure. This
was essentially Lincoln’s fault. In his attempt to dump McClellan, Lincoln had set Pope up as supreme commander over officers who, under Army Regulations,
outranked him. Moreover, Lincoln designed Pope’s army to include elements from
John Fremont’s command―Sigel’s corps―with Nathaniel Banks’s corps
and the corps of the Army of the Potomac. Each of the generals commanding these
several corps had personal agendas that were not compatible with Pope’s. As a
consequence, none of these officers had any interest in facilitating Pope’s
success; indeed most of them were downright hostile to Pope.

The disastrous effect of Pope’s command dysfunction
explains, in large measure, Pope’s ultimate defeat by Lee at Manassas. The
commanding general of an army must be recognized by his subordinate
officers as their master. Lee’s relationship with his officers illustrates this very well. He and Jackson were kindred
spirits, Jackson instantly ready to execute any order received from Lee.
Longstreet, on the other hand, saw himself as Lee’s equal, as being sort of in
co-command. Lee handled this trait in Longstreet by keeping personally close to
him, in position immediately to prod him into action. Lee also had the
advantage over Pope, having his army divided into wings, of dealing directly
with only these two officers, only one of which required a tight rein, while
Pope had to deal with not only Sigel but also McDowell, Banks, Heintzelman, Reno, and Porter. Pope had the problem of herding cats while Lee merely had to keep
Longstreet close, using Longstreet as his defensive arm while he extended his
reach with Jackson.

General John Pope

Jackson’s March
Around Pope’s Position at Warrenton

At any time during Jackson’s march to Thoroughfare Gap, via the
Rappahannock river crossing at Hinson’s Mill, then on through Orlean to Salem, John Pope could have easily moved his front to block Jackson’s progress.

The Wagon Road
Crossing at Hinson’s Mill

Jackson’s detachment from Lee’s main body should have
triggered in Pope’s mind the thought that the best countermove he could make
would be to divide his command into wings: one wing to maintain contact with
Lee’s main body while the other wing, under the command of Irvin McDowell,
maintained contact with Jackson’s.

Had Pope thought the issue of division through, his first
task was to decide which forces to keep under his direct command, facing Lee’s,
and which forces to place under McDowell’s command. Given the relative
positions of his forces on August 25-26, it should have been obvious to him
that McDowell and Sigel constitute the detached wing, with Porter, Heintzelman,
and Reno comprising the other wing. Banks’s small corps, shattered in its
struggle with Jackson at Cedar Mountain, quite properly would be assigned the
task of guarding the army trains which were then massed at Warrenton Junction,
on the line of the Orange & Alexandria Railroad.

Had Pope divided his army in this manner, the strength of
his wings would have been equal to or greater than Lee’s: McDowell’s command
would have had 17 brigades vs Jackson’s 14; Pope’s wing would have had 12
brigades vs Lee’s 12. Pope could anticipate, under the circumstances, that Lee
would eventually receive reinforcements, but so too would Pope, with the
prospect being that Pope’s reinforcements would exceed Lee’s. Pope could not
know with absolute certainty, of course, the precise number of brigades
available to Lee’s wings, but he could make a reasonable guess, based on the
intelligence received from Buford and his experience with Lee on the Rappahannock.

Pope in fact did divide his command into wings, ordering
McDowell, with three divisions, to take Sigel’s corps and move on Gainesville while he moved with Reno, Heintzelman and Porter on Manassas Junction. But
this decision was made a day too late. By that time Jackson had already passed
Thoroughfare Gap and was in Pope’s rear heading for Manassas Junction, reaching
there the morning of August 27. And Pope did not adopt the wing system as his
method of operation thereafter.

Lee’s Wing at
Salem

The morning of August 27, McDowell, with Sigel, occupied Gainesville while Lee’s wing was decamping from Salem and moving toward White Plains and
Thoroughfare Gap. By the evening Pope was at Bristoe Station with Hooker’s
division of Heintzelman’s corps. Jackson was at Manassas Junction. Porter’s
corps, which the day before had arrived at Rappahannock Station, had been
marching toward Bristoe at Pope’s order during the night, and would arrive there
in the mid-morning of August 28. Banks’s corps, with the army trains followed.

Here, at Bristoe Station, Pope had a second chance to think
through the situation: Jackson, with three divisions, was eight miles east of
Bristoe, at Manassas. Lee was somewhere behind the Bull Run Mountains, apparently moving north, but perhaps moving east, from the direction of Salem. Leaving McDowell, with Sigel, to deal with Lee if he came east, Pope could have
moved on Manassas with Kearny, Hooker, Reno and Porter.

Before deciding to do this, however, Pope had to first
analyze what Lee’s intentions at this point were. Given Lee’s consistent
movement northward since crossing the Rapidan, Pope might have surmised the
most likely thing Lee would do now is keep moving north, through Middleburg and
Adlie, to Leesburg. Given the fact that Jackson was now between Pope and Pope’s
reinforcements coming up from Alexandria, the logical thing for Jackson to do is move north to meet Lee. Based on these facts, the intelligent choice for
Pope to have made, was to leave his command divided in wings. While McDowell
dealt with Lee, either blocking his progress east or matching his movement
north, Pope’s wing would pursue Jackson, thereby clearing Pope’s
communications with Alexandria and coming closer to his reinforcements, and following
Jackson toward his probable destination at Leesburg where reunion with McDowell
would then occur.

But Pope did not decide this: instead, he sent orders to
McDowell to march, with Sigel, toward Manassas Junction, McDowell’s left to be
on the turnpike between Gainesville and Centreville, his right on the line of
the Manassas Gap Railroad. Pope’s idea here is hard to fathom, given the fact
that he had no reason then to think he could catch up to Jackson. Yet the
orders were issued, and by midmorning on August 28, Pope, with Heintzelman, was
at Manassas. Sigel’s corps and Reno’s arrived there around 1:00 p.m. Now, as changing reports were received by cavalry scouts, Pope kept changing his mind what
to do next, and the seeds of the disaster ahead were planted.

The Morning of
August 28

Upon arrival at Manassas, Pope’s cavalry reported that Jackson’s command had passed Bull Run in two columns, one at the Orange & Alexandria
Railroad Bridge, and the other at Blackburn’s Ford. Pope assumed logically that
Jackson was moving north toward the Little River Turnpike in order to meet
Lee at Leesburg. On this basis he sent a courier galloping to McDowell, who he
assumed was then marching eastward, to change direction to the north and head
for Gum Springs in an effort to cut Jackson off from Lee. At the same time,
Pope meant to follow Jackson’s rear, with the idea that his whole command would
converge on Jackson at or near Gum Springs. At this time, Pope’s mind had
obviously concluded that Lee was moving north, so there was no reason to be concerned
that he might be marching east.

By this time, however, Irvin McDowell, knew otherwise. His
cavalry scouts had reported to him early the morning of the 28th
that Lee’s command was approaching the west entrance to Thoroughfare Gap, and he had sent one of his
three divisions, Ricketts’s, to the eastern entrance, to block Lee from
passing. Reynolds’s and King’s divisions, McDowell had held at Gainesville in
support, letting Sigel march off to Manassas in conformance with Pope’s order
of the evening before. McDowell had sent a courier to Pope, carrying a message
that explained why he was not then following Sigel toward Manassas. As this
courier was enroute, the courier carrying Pope’s Gum Springs order arrived at
Gainesville and McDowell was pondering it, when yet another dispatch arrived
from Pope.

This second dispatch countermanded
the first. Pope had sent Hooker’s division toward Centreville and the report
had come back that Jackson, instead of having marched north, was supposed to be
occupying Centreville. This news prompted Pope to put Kearny and Reno in motion after Hooker. Sigel was just then arriving at Manassas. Pope’s new order
now called for McDowell to resume his march eastward, this time heading
directly for Centreville by using the turnpike. This was Pope’s first major
mistake. McDowell could have corrected it, simply by ignoring the order and
informing Pope that Lee was moving into Thoroughfare Gap.

For Lee’s part this moment was the turning point in his
general strategic plan of operations. Based on his actions of the last several
weeks, it is obvious that he intended from the time he crossed the Rapidan, to
move toward Leesburg, with the intention of crossing the Potomac into Maryland if possible. Somewhere a general battle would result, but only as a consequence of
developing circumstances. Clearly he had sent Jackson into Pope’s rear to
disrupt his communications with Alexandria, not to engage Pope in a battle. (It
must be assumed that Lee and Jackson were in communication via couriers during Jackson’s progress) Lee knew that Pope had the capacity to prevent his movement east from
Thoroughfare Gap, so he could not unite with Jackson east of the Bull Run Mountains unless Pope opened the way for him to do so. This Pope was about to do.

McDowell decided to execute Pope’s order. Earlier, before
Pope’s “Move on Centreville” order was received, McDowell had been marching
eastward in conformance with Pope’s original order. Reynolds’s division was in
the lead, passing Gainesville, when several shells whistled over his column
from the direction of Brawner’s Farm and exploded in the midst of one of
Meade’s regiments. McDowell halted the column and investigated the situation.
(During this time, in response to the cavalry reports of Lee’s movement,
McDowell had sent Ricketts to Haymarket at the gap entrance.) Now, with no
enemy to be seen, he ordered Reynolds to march across country, southeast,
toward Manassas and he ordered King’s division to march on the turnpike toward
Centreville. (Why he diverted Reynolds to Manassas he did not explain.)
McDowell also sent orders to Ricketts to abandon his position at Haymarket.
Having issued these orders, McDowell went off with several of his staff
officers in the direction of Manassas. He was not seen again, until 9:00 a.m. the next day, August 29.

With the gap now open, Lee moved through it on the morning
of the 29th. Clearly, his thinking had been changed by what he
realized Pope was doing. Lee certainly knew (his cavalry was roaming as far
east as the suburbs of Alexandria) that Pope’s reinforcements were not yet
marching. This meant Pope would have to fight with the force he had at hand and
it was still scattered across the countryside. Lee saw an opportunity to do
Pope damage and he characteristically jumped on it. By the late afternoon of
August 28, Jackson’s three divisions were taking up a defensive position at the
base of the Stony Ridge, on the west side of Bull Run, behind an abandoned
railroad excavation.

The Railroad Cut
Then

The Railroad Cut Now

Soon after McDowell disappeared, King’s division was
attacked by Taliaferro’s division at Brawner’s Farm and Gibbon’s brigade, along
with Doubleday’s, was wrecked. Rufus King suffered a stress attack in the
course of this and was replaced with John Hatch. Breaking off the engagement
(Dick Ewell lost a leg in this conflict), Hatch turned the division off the
turnpike and followed Reynolds’s division toward Manassas. Ricketts’s division,
abandoning the Gap, moved off to the south as far as the line of the Orange
& Alexandria Railroad. Pope, camped at Blackburn’s Ford, heard the noise of
the battle at Brawner’s Farm and assumed that McDowell had encountered Jackson retreating toward Lee and was blocking his progress. Immediately Pope issued
orders for Kearny’s division, supported by Hooker’s, which then was at
Centreville, to march before dawn for Bull Run and attack Jackson’s rear. To
Sigel went orders to march north on the Sudley Road and join Kearny in the
attack. In Pope’s mind, envisioning a three pronged converging attack on Jackson’s presumed retreating column, Jackson would be “bagged” and then Pope would deal
with Lee wherever he was.

The Situation the
Early Morning of August 29

At sunrise, John Pope was astride his stallion by the north
rim of the Henry Hill, watching a wave of Franz Sigel's krauts, on a front six
hundred yards wide, surge up a grassy slope in the distance and disappear into
a long stretch of trees. Crowded around him was his cavalry escort and an
entourage of aides and orderlies; among them was Captain Haven, who had come
into his camp at dawn with the news that it was John Gibbon's brigade of Rufus
King's division that had engaged the enemy on the slopes of the Brawner farm
the night before.

Standing by his camp fire at the time, eating a
breakfast of crackers and coffee, Pope had listened with a scowling face as
Haven told him that King's division had abandoned its position on the turnpike
after the fight, retreating toward Manassas in the night. At the same time,
Ricketts's division was reported to being marching toward Manassas Junction
from the direction of Bristoe Station, having camped for the night in the
vicinity of Greenwich. Asked where Irwin McDowell was when these movements were
being made, Haven said he did not know. Cursing McDowell loudly for not being
where he was supposed to be, John Pope had his stallion quickly saddled and
galloped up the Sudley Road to find that Franz Sigel had brought Stonewall
Jackson to a stand.

From the crown of the Henry Hill, the emerging battle zone
could be seen encompassed within the circumference of a circle, the radius of
which was approximately one mile wide. The intersection of the Sudley road and
the turnpike coincide with the center point of the circle—the Sudley road bisecting
the circle on a north/south plane and the turnpike on an east/west plane. East
of the intersection, just beyond the edge of the circle, is the stone bridge
which carries the turnpike over the stream of Bull Run and toward Centerville. At the edge of the circle west of the intersection is the hamlet of Groveton,
beyond which lies the wooded ridge from which rebel shells struck Reynolds's
division the day before. The ridge carries the forest screen in patches around
to the south toward a cluster of tracks called Five Forks, located a mile
distant from the circle's perimeter.

Scanning the battle zone with binoculars, John Pope
identified the troop formations moving in the fields by their colors. Due north
of the Henry Hill, the six regiments of Carl Schruz's little division were
entering the woods on both sides of the Sudley road. On
Schurz's left, in the northwest quadrant of the circle,
Milroy's brigade was supporting a line of Union field pieces which were in
action on the top of a rise where the ruins of the Dogan farm house stand. The
cannoneers handling these pieces were firing for effect against the enemy's
artillery batteries which were counter-firing from the heights of Brawner's
farm and from the shelf of a rocky ridge that extends a half mile to the north
of Groveton. Facing the fire of the enemy's batteries, Sigel's three remaining
brigades were bunched up on the south side of the pike, between Groveton and
the Dogan rise. Behind them, in the southwest quadrant of the circle, the
troops of John Reynolds's division were marching in a column, west across Chinn
Ridge, toward Lewis Lane, a track that intersects the turnpike at Groveton.

John Pope calculated quickly: counting Reynolds's troops,
which he was surprised to see, Sigel was maneuvering into action thirty-three
regiments organized in nine brigades. With the enemy's force estimated at
twenty-five thousand, Pope knew this was not enough to effect their
retreat—only constant pressure creating the threat of envelopment could
accomplish that.

Half-raising himself in the stirrups, he swung his
binoculars to gaze to the east across Bull Run. Where was Heintzelman, with the
six brigades—thirty regiments strong—of Kearny's and Hooker's divisions? They
should have been coming into action on Sigel's right before now. But he saw
only empty ground. Settling back in the saddle, he singled out Captain Piatt
from his entourage; clapping him on the back, he told him to ride to Reynolds
and ask where McDowell was. Then he dashed off the Henry Hill and, followed by
the rest of his cavalcade, he struck the turnpike at full gallop and pounded
over the stone bridge.

Ten minutes later, John Pope came to the crossing of Cub
Run, a tributary of Bull Run that flows northeast past Centerville, and found
Kearny's column of infantry stopped in front of a demolished bridge. A party of
muscled black men were standing on the charred beams of the bridge structure,
tacking down new planking. Crossing the shallow stream in one bound, Pope came
upon Philip Kearny sitting in an upholstered arm chair in a pasture by the
shoulder of the pike, eating scrambled eggs off a plate. Standing beside him
was a bugle boy in a brightly colored uniform. Behind them was a prairie
schooner that was used to transport his personal baggage; paid for from his
inherited wealth, the huge wagon contained a box spring bed, a wardrobe filled
with tailored uniforms, handmade riding boots, and a fully stocked kitchen
managed by a French chef. Pulling up his stallion, Pope angrily demanded,
"Why are you not at Bull Run?"

Philip Kearny was a strange man. With McClellan before Richmond, he had fought his division well enough, but the jungle climate of the James made
him ill with malaria and the piles of corpses and the wailings of the wounded
he encountered after the battles made him severely depressed. Irked by the
slaughter made senseless by McClellan's retreat from the peninsula, broken down
by his illnesses, Kearny had become bitter that an officer like John Pope had
gained rank over him. "Are there only imbeciles to lead us," he had
railed on the march from Bristoe Station. Now, he stared sullenly at Pope and
shrugged his shoulders insolently.

Reflexively John Pope shifted his weight to the near
stirrup, as though he were poised to dismount; then, he slowly relaxed in his
seat and looked down at Kearny with contempt gleaming in his eyes. Pointing to
Cub Run, Pope snapped, "Unless you want to throw your commission to the
winds, get your men up to Bull Run at the double quick and go directly in on
Sigel's right. The thing we must do is crush in the enemy's flank!"
Without waiting for an answer, Pope, turning his mount in a circle, continued
curtly. "Where is General Heintzelman?" In reply Kearny jerked his
head toward Centreville. Pope put spurs to his stallion and the animal lunged
forward, kicking up divots of grass almost in Kearny's face. Waving his hand as
Pope's cavalcade started off again at a sharp gallop, Kearny hollered,
"I'll see you in Hell Pope!"

Riding east on the turnpike for two miles, the cavalcade
swept by brigade after brigade of Kearny's soldiers and came to the hamlet of
Centreville. Passing the soldiers of Hooker's division at ease in the adjacent
fields, the horsemen pulled up in front of a stone church. The church building
was two stories and had high narrow plate glass windows, most of the panes of
which were missing or broken. Saddled horses were tied to a fence railing in a
long line that extended along the road in front. Across the road from the
church there was a tavern and in the fields around it were hundreds of two man
mud huts built with logs and tin sheeting for roofs. Stopping at the fence
line, Pope dismounted and, leaving his horse to the orderlies, he crossed the
road to the tavern where he found Heintzelman and his staff officers.
Confronted by Pope, Heintzelman explained that he had personally ordered Kearny to move his division up to Bull Run before dawn but Kearny had refused, insisting
that he would move when the last of his stragglers came up and his men were fed
and rested. Heintzelman had come to Centreville to requisition what commissary
supplies could be found there.

Telling Heintzelman to ride to Kearny and accompany him to Bull Run, John Pope sent his officers out to the Union depot and the garrison camp to inventory
what ammunition and supplies were available. Then he wrote several dispatches
to be delivered to Washington by couriers. To Halleck was sent a long message
which summarized the events that had occurred since August 25, the date of
Pope's last message; telling Halleck that the army was in contact with the
enemy at Bull Run, Pope asked that forage and provisions be sent forward as
fast as possible and that a construction train be sent to rebuild the railroad
bridges between Bull Run and Kettle Run.

Up to this point, John Pope had no particular reason to
question his conception of things. As far as he could fathom, Jackson had been
retreating the night before, obviously heading toward Thoroughfare Gap to
reunite with Lee, but the retreat was blocked by McDowell’s corps which,
according to orders, was marching east on the turnpike. Now, in the morning,
though Reynolds’s division had appeared near Henry Hill, Pope still was
operating under the assumption that he had Jackson boxed in; with Ricketts and
King on one side and Pope on the other. Therefore, in such circumstance,
clearly the right tactical thing to do was turn Jackson’s left near the Sudley Road, as this would compel him to retreat west as all of Pope’s army were collapsing
on him. Of course, Pope knew Lee was west of the Bull Run Mountains and even if
he was moving to Jackson’s aid, Pope’s tactics would push Jackson back on him. The
news Pope now received should have caused him to reevaluate this thinking
quickly.

For as the dispatches were being written out, John Gibbon
burst into the tavern and reported to Pope what had happened the night before.
After being fired upon from the heights of Brawner's Farm, Gibbon had advanced
three of his regiments up the hill and into the woods; just east of the farm
they had sailed into the front of William Taliaferro's division and the crown
of the Brawner farm became a death zone as the infantry on both sides poured
volleys of lead into each other. Taliaferro was shot three times and Richard
Ewell, bringing some units of his own division up, suffered a severed artery
when his femur was shattered by a bullet—the leg amputated at the scene by a
surgeon. Gibbon's brigade by this time was being overlapped on both flanks, and
because the rest of King's division failed to support it, Gibbon drew back to
the pike as darkness closed in. In little more than an hour of fighting,
Gibbon's brigade lost twelve field officers wounded, including all its
colonels, and suffered thirty percent casualties overall. At a council of war
held afterward, Gibbon wrote out a dispatch to Pope, stating that its position
being untenable with John Ricketts's division retiring from Thoroughfare Gap,
the division would march to Manassas during the night.

John Pope listened to Gibbon tell what happened at the
Brawner farm with a scowl on his face. "Where is McDowell?" He asked
when Gibbon was done. "No idea," Gibbon replied. Telling Gibbon to
wait outside, Pope sat at the desk for a long moment, nervously rubbing a thumb
back and forth across the knuckles of a hand as Ruggles and several of his
staff officers looked on. Among them was Captain Piatt, who had returned from
his ride to Reynolds, reporting to Pope that Reynolds had seen McDowell around
dawn near the bald hill on the Sudley Road.

Reynolds related to Piatt that McDowell had told him to move
his division across Chinn Ridge and take position south of Groveton. Conforming
to the order, Reynolds deployed
his front line along the Lewis Lane, at the edge of which
a thick stand of trees stretched to the southwest from the wooded ridge to Five Forks. Near its southern end, a by-road splits from it and, crossing the old Warrenton
and Alexandria road bed, connects to Five Forks at the southern fringe of the
woods. On its northern end the lane connects to the turnpike at the Groveton
hamlet; passing the hamlet the lane becomes a wagon road that ascends the long
slope to the Stony Ridge and then turns to the east and the ford of Bull Run near the Sudley Springs.

Thinking of what Gibbon and Piatt had said, Pope shook his
head in disgust. Just at the moment he had expected his forces to be
concentrated in the vicinity of Bull Run, Kearny was not where he was supposed
to be, and the three divisions of McDowell's corps—thirty thousand men—were
scattered over eight square miles of landscape. Reynolds was in the battle
zone, but King was four miles away at Manassas and Ricketts presumably was
somewhere near Bristoe Station.

John Pope thought next of the movement up the Sudley road
and into the north woods he had seen Carl Schurz initiate: Stonewall Jackson's
forces were in position behind the woods, but why would Jackson make a stand
there? To give his wagons and artillery enough time to escape to the north on
the roads toward Leesburg? No, they would have been long gone had Jackson marched straight through Centreville instead of turning west on to the turnpike.
Because he had been blocked from getting to Gainesville last night? But the
pike west of Groveton had now been clear for hours—if Jackson wanted to move
toward Gainesville, Sigel alone couldn't have prevented him. Shifting his
thinking to the information McDowell had given in his dispatch of the 27th that
General Lee was behind Thoroughfare Gap, Pope now began to realize Lee had no
intention of backing Jackson out today—Lee was moving three, possibly four,
rebel divisions east from Thoroughfare Gap. Here came Pope’s fatal
blunder―he assumed Lee would move up behind Jackson, to substitute
his fresh troops for Jackson’s and attempt to seize the offensive from Pope.

Given his training and experience, John Pope could conceive
of nothing else. Pope should have been thinking again of dividing his army into
wings, taking direct command of his forces occupied with Jackson on the north
side of the turnpike, he should have put McDowell in command of the remainder
with responsibility to cover the terrain on the south side, moving northwest in
the process toward Jackson’s presumed right flank as Pope continued to batter
against Jackson’s center and left. Also, too, Pope could have focused on a
reasonable alternative: go over to the defensive and wait for the rest of
McClellan’s troops to come up. Once he had everything in his hands, he would
have a force vastly superior in strength to Lee’s and Lee would have no choice
but to retreat or be destroyed.

The Situation
Materializing Toward Noon

Pope’s Right Front

Pope’s Left Front

Two hours later—around 9:00 a.m.—John Gibbon came riding
through the smoking ruins of Manassas Junction and encountered a large body of
troops marching east on the line of the Orange & Alexandria Railroad.
Passing along the column for a mile, he found Fitz John Porter down near Bethlehem Church and gave him a dispatch from Pope.

Opening it, Porter read: "Push forward your corps and
King's division upon Gainesville. I am following the enemy down the pike."
While Porter was reading this, Irwin McDowell appeared from a by-road leading
to Five Forks and came to his side. As McDowell was senior to Porter in rank
and the message concerned him, Porter passed it to him. Reading it, McDowell
expressed irritation at the reference to Porter taking King's division and
asked Porter to delay the march while he sought to communicate with Pope.
Porter agreed to leave King's division halted where it was while his troops
began countermarching west on the rock road to Gainesville, but when the rear
guard passed King, Porter wanted King to follow. Though Pope’s order took no
account of the possibility that, instead of moving up behind Jackson, Lee would
move up to the right of him, McDowell had very reason to think the possibility
was a probability. He had John Buford’s note in hand, stating that the front of
Lee’s column was passing Gainesville, and he could see the dust cloud kicked up
by Lee’s tramping soldiers.

McDowell rode to Manassas Junction and sent a courier to
Centreville with a message for Pope. It read: "I have just seen your last
order telling Porter to take King. Of course this is but temporary and I have
asked Porter to place King on his right, that I may have him back when you say
so." Instead of warning Pope of the peril of Lee extending Jackson’s line instead of supporting it, and asking for command of the left wing, McDowell
could think of nothing but getting back King; he already had Reynolds again
under his command and Ricketts would arrive at some point. McDowell wanted to
keep his corps intact, that was the paramount impulse in his mind at this time.

Two hours later his courier returned with Pope's response—a
movement order directed to McDowell and Porter jointly.

Headquarters
Army of Virginia

Centreville,
August 29, 1862

Generals
McDowell and Porter:

Move
forward with your joint commands toward Gainesville. Heintzelman, Sigel, and Reno are moving on the turnpike, and must now be not far from Gainesville. As soon as
communication exists between you the whole command shall halt. If any
considerable advantages are to be gained by departing from this order, it will
not be strictly carried out. One thing must be kept in view, that the troops
must occupy a position from which they can reach Bull Run tonight or in the
morning, on account of our supplies.

John
Pope, Major-General Commanding

Upon the receipt of this, in the company of his chief of
staff, Colonel Schriver, and several staff officers he had found, Irwin
McDowell was at a loss to understand what Pope expected to happen next. As he
was senior in rank to Porter, the reference to “joint command” was meaningless.
McDowell, if he saw “any considerable advantages” could “depart from the order”
at will. Also, moving forward toward Gainesville meant, in McDowell’s mind,
moving into the front of Lee, something he had successfully avoided doing since
he failed to support Sigel’s excursion across the Rappahannock on the 25th.
Furthermore, the paramount objective, Pope’s order announced, was to keep the
troops close to Bull Run, “on account of supplies.”

What was Pope thinking here? Nobody knows. Heintzelman,
Sigel, and Reno, at the time were not “moving on the turnpike” and were not any
closer to Gainesville than they were when they attacked Jackson’s front; they
were still attacking it, and though they certainly caved it in at places, the
line each time had stiffened and they were repetitatively driven back. Pope’s
order should have either ordered a general withdrawal toward Centreville, in
anticipation of McClellan’s troops arriving, or it should have detailed
McDowell to attempt an operation that might turn Jackson’s right. At the very
least, the order should have required McDowell to close the gap between
Reynolds’s position at Lewis Lane and Porter’s at Dawkins Creek. Here, Pope
demonstrated beyond doubt his incapacity to match wits with Jackson and Lee.

Thinking these things, McDowell rode west on the Gainesville road; passing King's division, which now was marching behind Sykes's division
of Porter's corps,. Here, he was stopped by one of John Buford's cavalryman
galloping up to him. The cavalryman handed McDowell a message from Buford,
timed at 9:30 a.m. It read: "A large force from the gap is making a
junction through Gainesville up the Centerville road with the forces in the
direction of the cannonading."

Folding Buford's dispatch away in a pocket, McDowell rode on
to the head of Porter's column which he found stopped at the crest of the
little stream valley that Dawkin's Branch runs through.

When McDowell arrived at the crest of the stream valley, a
brigade from George Morell's division was crossing Dawkins Branch; moving due
north along the bank of the nearly dry stream bed, it was heading toward the Manassas
Gap Railroad tracks and the old Warrenton & Alexandria road which runs
parallel to it some distance beyond. (This was an abandoned wagon road, washed
out by rains and engulfed in a stand of second growth trees.) On both sides of
the Gainesville pike to the west, companies of a Union regiment in skirmish
formation were climbing the opposite slope of the valley and disappearing into
a thick strip of woods. To the northwest, cannoneers of a rebel artillery
battery could be seen on a rise of ground about a mile beyond Dawkin's Branch,
their shots dropping periodically into the open terrain of the valley the Union
brigade was traversing. Behind them, a drifting plume of dust hung high in the
air in the direction of Gainesville.

To no one in particular among his entourage, McDowell shook
his head and said, "This is no place to fight a battle;" and, leaving
his companions to wait on the Gainesville road, he led his mount to the north.
Walking the horse at an angle down the slope, he went into a thicket of pine
scrub and came upon Fitz John Porter and George Morell dismounted near the
stream bottom.

As he dismounted his horse to join them, McDowell said to
Porter, "You are too far out here." Pulling his campaign map from his
blouse pocket, he showed Porter the position he had assigned John Reynolds to
occupy. Three-quarters of a mile north of the old Warrenton & Alexandria
road, Reynolds was moving into position at the Lewis farm lane. Then handing Porter
the message from John Buford to read, McDowell told him that to connect with
Reynolds from where they were, they would have almost two miles of rough
terrain to march over—with three, if not four, probable infantry divisions,
under the command of General Lee, converging on their flank.

Porter, having received from another courier his copy of
Pope's ”joint command” order, suggested that McDowell ride with him to the
right and reconnoiter the ground.

Leaving Morell behind, the two generals remounted and rode
north through the pine scrub until they came to the railroad tracks. The tracks
sit on a high ballast bed made of baseball-size chunks of stone and their
horses stumbled climbing up it. At the top, they moved west along the tracks
for fifty yards, but when rebel shells began exploding close to them, they
turned off the tracks and went north again, searching for a way to get troops
and artillery across to the old Warrenton & Alexandria road and to Five
Forks, an old clearing shown on McDowell’s map.

Reaching a point about two hundred yards from the railroad,
they came to the edge of a dense forest and stopped. While it was possible to
squeeze infantry through it, it was a place where artillery could not go unless
dirt tracks wide enough for the carriages could be found, or there was time for
pioneers to break a road.

Looking at the dust-filled western sky and the open ground
between the forest and the Gainesville road a mile behind them, both generals
agreed that, with a superior enemy force about to materialize on its flank, a
column of three divisions might be trapped in a kill zone if it tried to
connect with Reynolds this way. Turning back to the railroad tracks, Porter
suggested that, while his two divisions were deploying between the timber and
the Gainesville road, McDowell could take King's division around to the village
of New Market and, using the Warrenton & Alexandria Road, come into
position between Morell's division and Reynolds's.

Reaching the railroad tracks, Porter was crossing over when suddenly
McDowell turned his stallion and began riding east on the railroad tracks. Startled,
Porter called after him—"What shall I do?"—and McDowell, half-turning
in the saddle, waved a hand in the direction of the west and shouted, "You
go in here. I’ll go around."

Porter kicked his horse into a canter and returned to the Gainesville road where he came upon Colonel Elisha Marshall, commanding the skirmishers of
the 13th New York regiment. In the woods on the opposite side of the stream
valley, the regiment's skirmishers were being forced back to the eastern edge
of the timber as several rebel regiments in skirmish formation had appeared in
the open grassland beyond the trees and were exerting superior combat pressure.
Receiving this information about one o'clock, Porter deployed several batteries
of artillery and thought about what to do.

John Pope's joint order required him to move in the
direction of Gainesville, but not to go too far that the corps could not get
back to Bull Run by nightfall. McDowell had said he was already too far out—and
yet Pope's order clearly contemplated that he and McDowell use their forces to
connect somehow with Pope's forces operating on the north side of the old
Warrenton road.

Thinking this, it seemed obvious now to Porter that McDowell
meant to use the network of wagon tracks that converged on Five Forks to bring
King's division up the old Warrenton road and take position between his
position at Dawkins Branch and Reynolds's position at the Lewis Land. If that
were to happen, in two or three hours, Pope would have a continuous line
extending from Bull Run to the Manassas\Gainesville road. Kneeing his stallion
into motion, Fitz John Porter rode back to his corps; he had decided to stand
on the defensive and wait for McDowell to come up on the right.

The noon hour was ending when John Pope's cavalcade galloped
over the stone bridge and pulled up on the pike at the Sudley road
intersection. North of the pike, on the east side of the Sudley road, brigade
size blocks of troops were moving in different directions across open fields.
Directly ahead of the cavalcade, in the northwest quadrant of the intersection,
scores of soldiers were hobbling out of a band of thick trees into the
grassland. In front of the woods, a quarter mile from the intersection, Union
cannoneers were serving a line of field pieces positioned on the narrow ridge
where the Dogan family's farm house stood. The guns were throwing shells over
the tree line as incoming shells exploded in geysers of earth around them. Fifty
yards behind the guns, where the ridge slopes down toward the pike, the
soldiers of an infantry brigade were hunkered down. A half mile farther west,
near the Groveton crossroads, the sky was streaked plaid with the smoke trails
of more batteries in action.

Scattering his staff officers, to take reports from the
field commanders, John Pope rode with his cavalry escort out on the grassland;
passing the droves of wounded soldiers, he came to the edge of the woods.
Nudging his mount into the forest fringe, he halted in front of what was for a
horse an impenetrable tangle of undergrowth—blocking the way between the bases
of the mature trees, dense bushes and saplings crowded together like abatis.
Pope backed his horse to the edge of the forest and, turning sideways, he
listened. Coming from the deep recess of the forest, he heard faintly the sound
of men shouting and the crackling sound of skirmishers' rifle fire. The smell
of sulfur was in the air and grey smoke hung in drifts in the interspace
between the forest's upper canopy of leaves and the thickets obstructing the
forest floor. Here and there, in the gaps between the leaves, narrow shafts of
sunlight shone down illuminating the smoke.

Striking spurs to his stallion, John Pope galloped along the
tree line and over the Sudley road into the northeast quadrant of the
intersection. There, at the southern base of Matthews Hill, he came upon Carl
Schurz and Philip Kearny surrounded by their staff; shouting to be heard over
the screech of the cannonading, the two generals were engaged in angry
conversation. Since sunrise, seven hours before, the six regiments of Schurz's
little division had been in action, exerting pressure against the left wing of
the enemy's infantry line. Schurz's fighting began when two of his New York regiments—the Fifty-Fourth and the Fifty-eighth, went into the woods on the west
side of the Sudley road and encountered the skirmish line of the First South
Carolina regiment of Gregg's brigade.

Overlapped on their right by the Fifty-Eighth, the rebel
skirmishers slowly, quite slowly, began stepping backwards through the foliage.
Stopping when they caught the flash of blue jackets in the murk of the forest,
they pressed their shoulders against the trunks of the trees and went through
the rapid motions of tearing the cartridge open, pouring the powder in the
barrel, and ramming home the ball; and, then, craning their necks to catch
another glimpse of the enemy, their teeth bared in terrible grimaces, they
squeezed off their rounds. As the bullets clattered through the underbrush,
smacking against tree trunks and branches, scattering leaves, the rebel
skirmishers, always facing the enemy, stepped back a little more and stopped at
the next tree and fired again. Three hundred yards from where they first came
in contact with the New Yorkers in the middle of the forest, their ammunition
pouches almost empty now, the South Carolinians backed out of the woods at the
site of the abandoned railroad excavation.

The excavation consists of a ten foot wide corridor which
runs along the lower reaches of a ridge that extends from the Brawner farm site
to where the Sudley road, skirting the course of Bull Run, crosses Catharpin
Creek. Between the railroad excavation and the plateau of the ridge, a wagon
road runs from the Groveton crossroads, through farm fields and patches of
woodland, to the Sudley road. Covering a mile long front, from the point the
wagon road turns due south toward the Groveton crossroads and the point it
intersects the Sudley road, the six brigades of A.P. Hill's division were
deployed in the fields between the wagon road and the railroad excavation. At
the left end of Hill's lines, on a knob of ground overlooking Bull Run,
Branch's North Carolina Brigade was positioned to block the passage of the
Sudley road. Gregg's South Carolina Brigade, of which the 1st South Carolina
regiment was a part, occupied a quarter mile of ground to Branch's right. On
Gregg's right came Thomas's Georgia brigade and then Field's Virginia brigade.
Behind Gregg and Branch was Archer's Tennessee brigade and behind Thomas and
Field was Pender's North Carolina brigade.

When the South Carolinians came out of the woods at the site
of the railroad excavation, the main body of their regiment was standing behind
the north embankment. In June 1862, the First South Carolina regiment carried
five hundred men into action at Richmond. Now, there were only three hundred
men in the ranks. Sixty percent of the missing men were either killed or
wounded during the serial battles of the Chickahominy, while the rest of the
missing, through inertia, had dropped out of the ranks on the march north from Richmond. The men that remained were the hard core who thrived on deprivation and craved
the opportunity to battle the invader. And these men, with a kind of wolfish
baying, stepped forward in one mass to meet their comrades, and blasted the New
Yorkers as they burst hurrahing from the woods. Those of the New Yorkers the
withering rifle fire did not scathe, broke from the decimated line back into
the foliage. In flight through the forest, the New Yorkers rushed past their
officers who fired their pistols in the air and shouted, "Get back! Get
back, you women! Right about face." But, the woods being thick and all the
companies being mixed up now, the officers had lost all control of their
soldiers.

Then, abruptly, the New Yorkers' flight was arrested when
they encountered the front of the Seventy-fifth Pennsylvania regiment advancing
to meet them. With sheepish grins mixed with scowls on their faces, the routed
men rallied and reformed their ranks behind the Pennsylvanians; and soon the bolstered
lines of Union soldiers were moving toward the edge of the forest again.

An hour later, in the midst of the forest, the two sides
were fighting each other to a standstill in isolated struggles; the men of the
contesting regiments, deployed in depth by companies, receded and advanced in
the forest as their numbers gave them local advantages. At some points Schurz's
Germans pressed forward and fired point blank into the faces of the enemy,
while, at other points in the forest, the South Carolinians made vicious dashes
which threw the attackers back in confusion. In still other places, the fight
was made body to body; the men, depending on their physical strength to
overthrow their foes, clubbed with their rifles, hacked and stabbed with their
knives, and plummeted with their fists and feet. In the darkest reaches of the
forest, men fought each other like bears; growling, chest pressed against
chest, they stood on tip toes, straining to the limit of their strength to
strangle each other to death with hands gripped on throats. In the melee,
bullets spun and whirled into soldiers from every direction. Mortar rounds
crashed through the tree canopy, exploded, and showered the soldiers
indiscriminately with metal debris. Dense smoke filled the forest and, in
places, the carpet of leaves on the forest floor combusted, sending patches of
the underbrush roaring into flames. Everywhere contorted bodies were lying on the
ground, some growing rigid and bloated in death, others were crawling about,
moaning in pain; and, on both sides, men were steadily trickling to the rear,
quivering, shaken and demoralized by fear.

Finally the stalemate was broken when a rebel regiment from
Thomas's Georgia Brigade appeared on the west rim of the ravine and poured
volley after volley into the enemy, crumbling their front like paper. Under the
stress of the fire coming from the Fourteenth South Carolina in front and the Georgia regiment on their flank, the battling Union men heard orders that were never given
and ran pell mell out of the ravine and crashed into the underbrush of the
forest.

Standing stationary for a moment, the rebel soldiers gaped
expectantly at their officers, as panting setters stand watching their masters
for the signal to chase down the kill. Waving a red sword over his head, the
colonel of the Fourteenth, Samuel McGowan, appeared on the rim of the ravine
and shouted, "Go on, Boys! Catch the devils and give em hell."
Somewhere behind McGowan a bugle brayed, and the shaggy rebel men began to howl
like wolves. As one gigantic pack they leaped into motion and went loping into
the woods in a crouching run. Hurtling along the tunneled tracks the Union men
had made in the underbrush, the momentary victors caught up with the rear ranks
of the vanquished and used their knives to hack and hew at their prey. After
five long minutes of murderous stop and run close struggles, where pleas for
quarter were stifled with skull crunching blows, a terror-stricken crowd of
fugitives spilled out of the forest.

Ahead of them, on Dogan's ridge, Union cannoneers stood on
the axles of their gun carriages and, waving their hands over the heads, they
shouted in a chorus for the soldiers to clear their line of fire. Swinging to
right and left, the rabble of soldiers opened an alley just as their
bloodthirsty pursuers bounded from the woods after them. At one gun and then
another, cannoneers stepped to the muzzle of their cannon, rammed down the tube
powder bag and shot, and stepped aside as matches touched vents and the gunners
pulled lanyards, and the guns flamed and bucked clumps of iron balls into the
dense mass of howling rebels.

It was during this latter phase of the morning action, when
the pressure of Schurz's attack had fallen off to a sniper's game, that John
Pope found Schurz and Kearny arguing. Schurz was incensed that Kearny had not supported him. While the New Yorkers were attacking the enemy's position on
the west side of the Sudley road, Schurz's three remaining regiments—the
Sixty-first Ohio, Seventy-Fourth Pennsylvania, and Eight West Virginia—had
advanced on the east side. Two of these regiments had crossed over the road,
passed the railroad excavation, and reached a corn field in front of the rocky
knoll, but, after a sharp fight, they were forced back to the east side by Orr's
rifles, the South Carolina Brigade's last reserve regiment, and two regiments
of Branch's brigade. At the same time Schurz had called upon Franz Sigel for
help on the left of the Sudley road, he sent a messenger to Kearny, whose
division by this time had crossed the stone bridge and was concentrating in the
northeast quadrant of the intersection. Schurz requested that Kearny advance to
support his regiments on the right. For a short time after the message was
sent, it appeared to Schurz that Kearny was responding cooperatively with his
request. One of Kearny's three brigades—Poe's—was seen moving north on the
Sudley road; but, instead of it going into the woods behind Schurz's regiments,
it turned to the east and marched to Bull Run where it crossed at a ford.

Kearny's second and third brigades—Robinson's, with three
regiments, and Birney's, with seven—followed Poe's march as far as the stream.
While Schurz's regiments were being hounded out of the trees, Poe's brigade
marched north along the left bank of Bull Run until it encountered rebel
cavalry with artillery occupying the continuation of the railroad excavation.
There, after a brief exchange of gun fire, Poe turned his brigade around and
eventually recrossed the stream. Meanwhile, with Robinson's brigade halting
near the right bank of Bull Run, Birney, following in Robinson's rear,
countermarched his brigade to the vicinity of Matthews Hill and placed his
regiments in support of Kearny's artillery, which was engaged with rebel
batteries positioned on the middle shelf of the ridge up the Sudley road.
Listening to Schurz's rant Kearny sat rigid in the saddle, with an expression
of indifference on his gaunt face; he was more concerned with taking care of
his own men than bailing Schurz's out.

After listening for a time, John Pope broke into the
generals' quarrel and curtly ordered Schurz to return to the west side of the
Sudley road. Then, giving Kearny a piercing look of distain, he rode a short
distance north on the Sudley road to the fringe of the forest. Under the fire
of the rebel cannon, he reined in his horse at the headquarters of the
Sixty-first Ohio and conversed for a moment with its colonel. Turning westward,
he crossed the Sudley road and rode over the grasslands, stopping every now and
then when he came across one of Schurz's field officers. From these officers,
he learned about the railroad cut, the wagon road, the rocky ridge behind it
and the rebels' strength of resistance. Then, he galloped across the fields to
Dogan's Ridge.

Finding Sam Heintzelman, Franz Sigel, and Robert Milroy
waiting for him there, he learned that, while Schurz's infantry had been pawing
at the enemy's left wing from the edge of the woods, Milroy's brigade of four
regiments had been wrecked attacking the enemy's center. A half mile to the
west of Dogan's ridge, the wagon road that connects to the Sudley road bends
south to the hamlet of Groveton. Following the bend in the road, in a dogleg,
the forest meets an open corridor of grassland, with patches of orchards and
flower fields, which sweeps across the road and slopes up to the railroad cut.
Passing through the dogleg of the woods, Milroy's first line—the Eighty-second Ohio
and the Fifth West Virginia—had crossed the wagon road and went up the wide
grassy slope that rises to the rocky ridge. Followed by the Second and Third
West Virginia regiments, the men in the first line were climbing a fence that
bordered the railroad excavation when they were struck by volleys of converging
rifle fire.

The front rank of men tumbling to the ground, the companies
of the Eighty-second Ohio coming up behind charged to the left, while the men
of the Fifth West Virginia flattened themselves on the ground. In their charge
the Ohioans stumbled by chance into an undefended ravine that penetrated the
railroad excavation and stormed into the right rear of Isaac Trimble's brigade.
Trimble was holding the center of the rebel line, with
Douglas's brigade on his left connected to Field and
Bradley Johnson's brigade on his right connected to Stafford's. Simultaneously
with the Ohioans' appearance in Trimble's rear, two Virginia regiments from
Bradley Johnson's brigade arrived in a mass on their left flank and scalded
them with fire. Their colonel and two of their captains killed in the
fusillade, the formation of Ohioans disintegrated into a mob of scattering
individuals running like mice for their lives. Scampering back through the
ravine, which was now ringed by flaming rifles, the Ohioans collided with the
second line of West Virginians, whose ranks disintegrated in the surge and were
swept along with the Ohioans to the cover of the woods. In less than twenty
minutes, Milroy's brigade suffered the loss of three hundred men killed,
wounded, or missing.

Absorbing this, Pope spun his horse roughly around and
cantered toward the pike. Passing through the throng of infantry, artillery
batteries, and wagons clogging the pike, he crossed to the south side and
dropped down into the shallow valley the main channel of Young's Branch runs
through, and forded the stream. Slackening his stallion's pace on the downhill
slope, he kicked him into stride again on the opposite side, and the big
stallion, whinnying, ascended to the top of Chinn Ridge in short lunging
strides. Following the western rim of the ridge, he came to the edge that
overlooks the main fork of Young's Branch and stopped. From a saddle bag he retrieved
his field glasses and with its help he brought the distant ground in front
close to him. A quarter mile to the west, he caught glimpses of the Lewis lane
as he scanned the patchwork of trees that spread south from the Groveton
crossroads. Directly in front of the ridge, he spotted Reynolds's artillery batteries
parked on both banks of the fork where it intersects the lane. Beyond the guns,
through the break in the trees, he saw the files of Reynolds's regiments facing
an open field, bordered on the west by more woods. And, at the edge of these
woods, he thought he saw the flash of bayonets.

Lowering the field glasses to the pommel of his saddle, John
Pope reflected: since yesterday, when he learned from McDowell that the force
remaining with General Lee had turned toward Thoroughfare Gap, he knew the likelihood
was great the rebel army would soon be reunited in his front; and now he was
sure that at least General Lee's advance guard must be connecting.

But the knowledge did not frighten him. Like General Lee,
John Pope was in the terrible business of tabulating the expenditure of
soldiers' lives; keeping tabs on the balance sheet, making debit entries for
his wastage and credit entries for his replacements, he was certain that his
existing force was still numerically the stronger. According to Irwin McDowell's
note of yesterday, the size of General Lee's force was four divisions. With
Reynolds and Schenck holding the line of the Lewis lane, McDowell, with King's
and Porter's divisions, could confidently strike at Lee's right and rear, he
thought..

Raising his field glasses again, John Pope scanned to the
south. In spots he could see the line of the Old Warrenton & Alexandria
road cutting through open patches of forest, but, beyond it, a wide swath of
pine forest blocked his view of the Gainesville road. He thought: where is
McDowell? His infantry should be engaged with General Lee's by now.

Thinking this, Pope rubbed his chin with the fist of his
hand and considered the center and left of the enemy line. Milroy had beat
against the center and Schurz the left; probing for soft spots, they had
discovered small cracks but before they could exploit their penetrations the
enemy sealed them. Pope looked for a time at the center of the rebel line. The
approach to it was over the open grassland which came within the range of the
long array of rebel guns near the Brawner farm. Then, he shifted his
concentration to the enemy's left wing, his view of it blocked by trees.
According to Franz Sigel, the left of Jackson's line was very dense. Jackson's troops occupied an elevated space, having before them the railroad excavation,
which they were using as a battlement, and the cover provided by the curving
band of thick trees, with access to their rear protected by Bull Run. An idea
stormed in John Pope's head: if Jackson's left might be forced back from Bull Run and the Sudley road then. . .

But here he quivered. Success would depend upon the ability
of his field commanders to act in concert; and, regardless of the outcome,
thousands of men would be sacrificed in the endeavor. He thought of his
experience with Franz Sigel; his personal contact with the morose, nervous little
German had always been hostile and demeaning. But, with Sigel's forces, under
Milroy and Schurz, already used up, and Schenck's division committed to cooperate
with McDowell's left wing, Sigel would be out of the action. That left the
combat power in the hands of Heintzelman and his two division commanders, Kearny and Hooker. Reno and Stevens would play secondary roles. Yet, Pope had barely spent
an hour of time with any of them. They were strangers, whose loyalties were
suspect, and they had been slow to reach the battle zone in the morning. Could
he count on them to launch a major attack on Jackson? He didn't know.

Quickly, John Pope tabulated the numbers. At the moment,
eight fresh brigades were available: Kearny's three, two of Hooker's, one
possibly taken from Schenck, two, maybe three, from Reno and Stevens. The rest of the Union force
was either allocated to the left wing, to counter an advance by the forces
under General Lee, or too worn down by the morning's fighting to be used for
offensive action. According to Sigel's estimate, Jackson had close to twelve
brigades manning two miles of front. Just four more brigades added to the
weight of Heintzelman's attack might make the difference between repulse and
rout.

Pope thought: where was Rickett's division? Where were
Franklin's and Sumner's corps? Now, in a fleeting moment of uncertainty, Pope
wavered in his grip on things. He thought of falling back to Centreville. But,
then, the image of Lincoln's gnarled face
flickered in his mind and he knew that retreat from Bull Run would ruin him. Lincoln had given him the supreme command because he had promised
he would attack the enemy where he was found. If he showed the enemy his back
in the crunch, Lincoln would abandon him in a heartbeat.

Suddenly, a horseman crested the ridge to the east of him
and, reflexively, he half-raised in the stirrups, squinting to see the color of
the rider's uniform. For a moment he couldn't make the color out, the horse was
coming straight on, snorting for breath in the stifling heat of the afternoon.
Then, he caught a glimpse of blue and settled in the saddle again. Soon,
slackening his pace to a heaving walk, the horseman came up to Pope's side and
handed him a piece of paper. Opening it, Pope read a message from Irvin
McDowell: I have King's division marching to join you on the Sudley road.
King's lead brigade should reach the pike by 4 o'clock. Rickett's division follows.

Taking his field glasses from the saddle bag, he turned in
the saddle and scanned the tree line in the direction of Manassas. A drifting
dust cloud—the tell-tale sign of an infantry column marching—was visible above
the trees. Stowing the glasses again, he took a quick look at his pocket watch;
the time was half past two o'clock. In a flash, he made up his mind to attack
Stonewall Jackson. His plan of action: strike the center of Jackson's line,
which will induce him to freeze his reserves; as that is happening, strike his
right as a secondary diversion; then, push against the end of his line on the
left with two brigade-size strikes from different angles, paving the way for
the coup de grace—King's division will go up the Sudley road and pour through the
gap created by the push back, forcing Jackson to scramble to safety behind
General Lee. Signaling McDowell's messenger to follow him, John Pope slapped
the flank of his stallion and bounded down the slope of Chinn Ridge.

Thirty minutes after John Pope returned to his Headquarters
post on Dogan's Ridge, Cuvier Grover, whose brigade was at rest, in the woods
behind Carr's men, received an order by messenger to move into Schurz's sector
and attack the enemy's front. By three o'clock, with Steven's regiments moved
behind him in the woods, Grover formed a spearhead of his five regiments and
sent them charging through a maelstrom of bullets into Edward Thomas's Georgia brigade. Ascending to the lip of the excavation without firing a shot, Grover's
soldiers discharged their rifles in mass and plunged forward to do devils' work
with the bayonet. Shocked by the suddenness of the attack, the Georgians tried
for a moment to ward off the assailants with the butts of their rifles, but the
wings of their brigade gave way. Standing in the center, like a boulder in
rushing water, the Forty-fifth Georgia held its position for a time but,
eventually, it, too, was rolled back on the rebel second line, where a fierce
hand-to-hand combat ensued.

As Grover's brigade swept past the railroad excavation on a
quarter mile front, the First Massachusetts poured into the marshy ravine that
separated the Georgians' left flank from the South Carolina brigade's right.
Racing to the north end, the Massachusetts men ran headlong into the Thirteenth
South Carolina. Despite the losses they had sustained, during the incessant
skirmishing that had gone on in their front since dawn, the South Carolinians
formed a living bulwark at the mouth of the ravine; there, in a frenzy of fury,
men massacred each other. There was a great roaring clamor as these embittered
antagonists collided in a mauling grapple, body to body: looking into each
other's eyes, their chests heaving, their feet sliding against the strain in
the leaves, they were brutes gone wild with the terror of the moment and, with
their knives and bayonets, they slashed, gutted and butchered. All human sense
in them, of patriotism and religion, gone in the thrill of the death storm.

Then the force in the tide of men began to reverse its direction.
As Grover's left wing and center crossed the Groveton wagon road, pushing the
Georgians back on the rocky ridge, more regiments of the South Carolina Brigade
came running from the left of their sector and shored up the Georgians' caving
lines. In the huge rents in the Georgians' line, rebel field pieces were run
out from the lower shelves of the rocky ridge and blasted the enemy back with
shrapnel. In the center of the fight, the tip of the Union spearhead—the Second
New Hampshire—came to a shuttering halt and began to edge backwards as its
ranks crumbled under the cross currents of massed rifle volleys striking its
front and flanks. Suddenly, then, in the midst of the roaring all around, and
the bullets raking the earth and canister splintering the trees, Dorsy Pender's
North Carolina Brigade came through the smoke and crashed into Grover's left
wing, shattering its organization and driving it back. Now, on Grover's right,
with the Georgians and South Carolinians connected in an organized line pressing
against its front, the Union men were forced from the ravine, back over the
Groveton wagon road, back over the railroad cut. Seeing their comrades veering
to the rear, realizing a ring of fire was closing around them, the men of the
Second New Hampshire broke and ran for their lives, their eyes blazing with
reproof.

With the suddenness of a dike rupturing, the battered
wreckage of the awful struggle flooded the forest. The faces streaming by
showed traits of every class; from the countryside, dull-witted farm boys and
ignorant town boys; from the cities, riffraff of the streets and the cream of
the avenues. A few months before, most of these people had been leading their
different lives, in indifference or antagonism to each other, as alien as
enemies across a frontier. Now, battered, shattered and spent, they shared an
instinctive community of emotion—they meant to come again and avenge their
loss. In thirty minutes of battle, Grover's brigade lost more men than Carr's
did in three hours of skirmishing—eight officers killed, eighteen wounded; the
men in the ranks, forty seven dead, three hundred and eleven wounded, one
hundred and two missing. The men were fast learning the arithmetic of war. No
one knew how long the war would last, but they knew by now the sacrifices it
would necessitate. And, though it might slay them, they meant to trust in it.

John Pope was standing on the Dogan summit when the first
wave of Grover's battered men spilled out of the forest onto the grassland.
Clustered around him were Samuel Heintzelman, Franz Sigel, Jesse Reno and Joe
Hooker. Hooker, furious that Carr's and Grover's brigades were wrecked, was
loudly reciting the reasons why Pope should rescind his order that Hooker's
reserve brigade, Nelson Taylor's, go in the woods and battle. With his arms
folded across his chest, Pope remained mute. Next to Hooker, Reno, too, was
silent. During the time Grover was engaged with the enemy, couriers had
shuttled back and forth between the fighting front and Dogan's Ridge, bringing
Pope reports that the Union line was advancing. Encouraged by these reports,
Pope had ordered Hooker and Reno to each advance a brigade and attack on
Grover's right, and now, in the flower fields west of the ridge, Nagle's
brigade of four regiments, followed at a distance by Nelson's Taylor's, was
moving into the southwest corner of the woods. Seeing that he was being
ignored, Hooker turned on his heel and stalked to where an orderly was holding
the bridle of his giant white stallion, and in one fluid motion he was in the
saddle. "They are going to a useless slaughter," he shouted over the
din as he whirled his horse away.

As Hooker was striding angrily away, Sam Heintzelman stepped
close to Pope's ear and tried to explain why Philip Kearny's division had not attacked
the enemy's left flank while Grover was attacking its center, as Pope had
ordered. To execute the order, Kearny chose to advance his smallest brigade,
John Robinson's, leaving his largest, David Birney's and Orlando Poe's, in the
rear on both sides of the Sudley road. Advancing his three regiments along the
right bank of Bull Run, Robinson swung them across the Sudley road and had
found the railroad excavation deserted. The crashing sound of a rifle volley
was heard in the direction of Grover's sector, and Robinson, instead of rushing
his troops forward, arranged the Sixty-third and One hundred and fifth Pennsylvania regiments in line of battle on the Sudley road, placing the Twentieth Indiana
regiment behind. The reason: two hundred yards to the northwest, at the
opposite end of a large farm field, he saw rebel infantry massed along a rail
fence and decided to assume a defensive position.

Hearing this, Pope gave Heintzelman a withering look.
"I told you Kearny must send a strong force to relieve the pressure
against Grover in the woods," he snapped.

Heintzelman raised his hands and let them flop against his
sides in mock exasperation. "General Kearny appears reluctant to engage
today," he said.

John Pope looked at Heintzelman with an expression of disgust
on his face. He had the grizzled grey beard finally sized up as an incompetent.
Beckoning to Benjamin Roberts, one of his cronies who was standing near, Pope
took him by the arm and walked a few paces. "Go to Kearny," he said,
as he tapped the flat of one hand against his fingertips. "Say to him that
I direct he use Birney and Poe to attack the end of Jackson's line from two
directions. Tell him I expect he will roll it up."

As Roberts was mounting his horse, Pope turned back and saw
Franz Sigel smirking at him. Catching the mean glare of Pope's eyes, Sigel
walked away. For the moment, he was satisfied that Pope had assigned the
reserve to his corps. Two of his brigades, McLean's and Stahl's, were in
position with Reynolds on the south side of the pike, but the remainder of his
brigades were down in the hollow behind Dogan's ridge; some were sprawled
asleep on the ground, others, bare-chested, were scrubbing blood from their
shirts in the shallow creek by the Sudley road, still others were cooking sparse
meals over gypsy fires, while the artillery shells from the incessant
cannonading screamed all around.

Pope started to call Sigel back but the sudden swell of the
cannonading warned him something sinister was happening in front, and he ran
toward the rim of the ridge. As he came near, he saw Grover's soldiers
scampering across the grassland. Durell's battery of Napoleons was in action on
the lower reaches of the ridge and some of the spongers had gone in front of
their guns, waving their ram rods over their heads like semaphores, they were
signaling for the fleeing Union men to get out of their way. Behind the wild
scramble of Union men, the men of Pender's North Carolina brigade were coming
out of the forest and assembling in a thick mass on the verge of the grassland;
their front advancing yard by yard as more of them emerged from the trees and
came up to the rear. Then, the North Carolinians, in one solid mass of brown,
leveled their rifles—and there came rolling across the grassland a crashing
sound as a thousand rifles discharged as one. In the rear ranks of the Union
men scores fell stumbling to the ground.

As the rush of bullets found their marks, Grover's front
ranks split into wings and veered to the east and west, opening a wide lane in
front of Durell's guns. Instantly, the cannoneers had the canister rammed down
and the gunners touched the howitzers off. From the muzzles of the guns heaps
of shrapnel spewed through expanding rings of smoke and tumbled end over end
across the field. whipping viciously through Pender's ranks. Leaning forward,
their heads bowed to the side, the rebel soldiers hastened their pace, firing
their rifles as they came; but, the cannoneers shoved their recoiled guns
forward into battery and sent more shrapnel flying, and now Grover's men,
reformed into their regiments again, came forward and began matching the enemy,
volley for volley.

John Pope watched with glistening eyes as the rebel infantry
turned back and disappeared into the forest. Closing ranks on the grassland, the
remnants of Carr's and Grover's brigades came slowly to the edge of the forest
and sent skirmishers in. Watching the troops advance, Pope heard the muffled
crash of fresh rifle volleys, off to the northwest, and to the east more of the
same. Swamped by a momentary feeling of elation he clapped his hands together.
The taxing hours of sparring, then the heavy blow to the belly by Grover's
brigade, the enemy's counterpunch deflected, and now it would be Pope, not
Jackson, who was stepping close and swinging into the ribs heavy blows.

Just then, from behind him, he heard someone shout and he
spun around. Colonel Elliott had one hand cupped around his mouth and, with the
other, was pointing to the south. Pope took several paces toward him, looking
to the distance across the pike. He saw it! There, on the Sudley road, the blue
front of an infantry column—the spangled flags of King's division streaming
overhead—was spilling over the saddle between the Bald and Henry hills.
Breaking into a jog, he ran past Elliott to where the pack of orderlies were
seated in their saddles waiting for messages to carry. Singling out McDowell's
courier from among them, he pulled him down by the arm and shouted in his
ear—"There is General McDowell coming; go and tell him I said he is just
in time; tell him I say he must hurry straight forward on the Sudley road and
support Kearny's attack with his brigades." Pope slapped hard at the
glossy flank of the trooper's horse and horse and rider bolted away.

Returning to the summit of the ridge, John Pope found George
Ruggles and several of his staff officers assembled around a field telescope on
a tripod and he stood with them; taking reports and giving orders, he waited
anxiously for his blows to fall. On the west side of Dogan's Ridge, Nagle's
attack, supported by Taylor, would keep Jackson's reserves on his right wing
fixed in place, thereby leaving the rebel left wing to fend for itself—when,
after Kearny's brigades pushed it back from the Sudley road, the weight of
McDowell's force would just in time pour into its rear.

As John Pope was thinking this, George Ruggles exclaimed,
"What's this?" And he stirred from Pope's side. Ruggles stepped
forward and, swiveling the telescope to face west, put his eye to the piece.
Sensing something wrong, Pope stepped forward also and, cupping his hands over
the brows of his eyes, he squinted against the glare of the late afternoon sun.
From a clump of trees on the west side of the Groveton hamlet, he saw tiny
blurred figures, like army ants, spreading into the fields, heading toward
Dogan's Ridge. Interspersed at different points among them were red-crossed
blazons swelling in the breeze.

Reflexively, Pope shoved Ruggles aside and brought the
telescope into focus on the Groveton wagon road. The soldiers manning the front
line of Milroy's three regiments were lying down in the road, firing their
rifles from behind the berm, while, across the road in their rear, Milroy's Ohio light artillery—an ensemble of six brass Napoleons—was discharging canister rounds
over their heads. Swinging the telescope up the line of the road, Pope saw
that, from where the monumental shaft of brown stone now stands, another enemy
horde was filling the flower fields on the north side of the hamlet and,
wheeling their front to the east, they were entering the woods where Nagle and
Taylor were. Instantly, John Pope knew the danger—his center might be
overrun—and he grabbed Ruggles by the arm and shouted orders in his ear.

"Tell Sigel he must support Milroy with his corps
immediately!" He said. "Tell Reno the same." Then, still
gripping Ruggles's arm, he hesitated. He could not believe it. This he had not
expected: Jackson's whole right wing seemed to be counterattacking, and
brigade-size blocks of troops from General Lee's force were joining in. He
looked east over his shoulder at the dust cloud spiraling up from the Sudley
road. The thought of how combat oscillates, ebbs and flows, swells and
disperses, flashed in his mind. Would Sigel and Reno be enough to keep the
enemy back from Dogan's Ridge? If they could, Kearny and McDowell might
overwhelm the enemy's left and drive it back on the center; surely the pressure
would make the rebels fall back from Dogan's Ridge. A long moment went by as
Pope wrestled with his dilemma. Finally, pushing Ruggles into a run, he
hissed—"Tell McDowell he must divert his force down the pike."

During this time, Nagle's and Taylor's soldiers began
streaming out of the forest. An hour earlier, Jim Nagle had brought his three
regiments—the Sixth New Hampshire, the Second Maryland, and the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania—in
one line through the forest to the point where the Groveton wagon road
intersects the railroad excavation. Crossing the road, with the Forty-eighth in
the center, these Union regiments collided with the front of Isaac Trimble's
brigade. Some time before, during the skirmishing with Carr's men, Trimble had
been wounded and taken from the field. Without an effective leader, the
organization of the rebel brigade disintegrated upon Nagle's impact and fled
toward the rocky ridge. Flushed with the feeling of a kill, the Pennsylvanians
continued their charge across the railroad embankment and into the thick of the
forest. Following the Pennsylvanians, the Sixth New Hampshire regiment veered
to the west and opened out into skirmish order, while the Second Maryland
veered to the east. Minutes later, the gaps between the trees in front of them
filled with brown clad men and their advance, staggered by massed rifle blasts,
abruptly came to a stop. Recoiling, the Union men scrambled rearward as sheet
after sheet of rifle fire sliced into them.

Coming to Trimble's support, Henry Forno's Louisiana
brigade, the soldiers baying like wolves, chased the Pennsylvanians and
Marylanders back across the railroad cut and over the wagon road and into the
trees. In concert, Bradley Johnson's Virginia brigade, holding a quarter-mile
sector of ground on Trimble's right, came across the cultivated ground west of
the wagon road and careened into the flank of the retreating New Hampshire men.
Joining the Virginians in the advance, Strafford's brigade came forward into
the flower fields and swung its left wing into the corner of the forest,
reaching to cut off Nagle's retreat, while its right wing diverged toward
Milroy's right flank and rear. At the same time, Law's brigade of John Hood's
recently arrived division stormed against Milroy's front, and on the south side
of the pike the Texas brigade stormed out of the woods. The whole of this
division-size force, with curdling yells, overran the wagon road and spilled
out of the forest, pressing Milroy and Nagle back toward the face of Dogan's
Ridge.

Behind Nagle in the woods, the regiments of Nelson Taylor's
brigade were dressing their lines, preparatory to moving up to the railroad
excavation, when the receding tide of Union men, pressed by the
counterattacking rebel force, came stumbling through the woods and shattered Taylor's formation. The whole mass became entangled in a jumble and panic ensued, and the
rush to the rear increased its velocity. Now, ten thousand men, the front
runners the prey, those in the rear the predators, broke out into the open in
front of Dogan's Ridge.

To stem the tide of rebel success, John Pope had brought
McLean's and Stahl's brigades of Sigel's corps from the south to the north side
of the pike and stopped the collapse of Milroy's front at a tributary of
Young's Branch, a quarter mile west of Dogan's Ridge. Law's brigade, stalling
to a halt in the flower fields, a few hundred yards east of the Groveton wagon
road, brought up artillery and cannonaded the ridge while Pope got Dieckman's
and Hampton's batteries in action and blasted back. On the south side of the
pike, the Texas brigade kept pace with Law's brigade, stopping behind Young's
Branch as King's batteries arrived on Chinn Ridge in front of them and came
into action. On Milroy's right, Nagle and Taylor reformed their regiments at
the base of Dogan's Ridge and, supported by Durell's battery and Ferrero's
brigade, brought Stafford's and Johnson's brigade to a standstill at the edge
of the wood.

Recognizing that the rebel counterattack had been checked,
John Pope turned his attention back to Kearny's sector and the Union attack on Jackson's left. Two of King's brigades—Doubleday's and Gibbon's—had turned off the Sudley
road and were closing on the rear of Dogan's Ridge, but the remaining two
brigades—Sullivan's and Patrick's—were standing on the Sudley road near the
Henry Hill. Calling for an orderly, Pope scribbled a message to McDowell—"The
enemy has been stopped in the center; get King's reserve brigades moving to Kearny's support on the Sudley road." Standing on the Dogan summit, Pope watched as
the courier sped off the ridge and across the intersection and went up the side
of the Henry Hill, where he stopped in the midst of a crowd of horsemen. A long
moment passed as Pope watched impatiently; then, he saw a rider spilt from the
group and come headlong down the hill, with stirrups flapping, heading for
Dogan's Ridge.

As the rider came at the gallop across the intervening
ground, George Ruggles and Colonel Elliott appeared at Pope's side with reports
of Kearny's progress on the Union right. John Robinson's brigade of three
regiments still held the railroad excavation at the point it passes the Sudley
road. The Sixty-third Pennsylvania was on the south side of the cut, in a line
of battle facing to the west. The One Hundred and Fifth Pennsylvania was on the
north side also facing west. Coming up on the right of the One Hundred and
Fifth was the Third Michigan of Poe's brigade, and four of David Birney's seven
regiments—the Fourth Maine, First, Fortieth, and One Hundred and First New York
regiments—were on the west side of the Sudley road, approaching the railroad
cut from the south. Behind them, in an arc, traversing the Sudley road, Kearny had three artillery batteries going into action: McGilvery's, Graham's, and
Randolph's. Nodding in satisfaction, Pope told Elliott to ride to Kearny and tell him to commence the attack; then, stepping down from the hillock, he
walked forward a few paces on the ridge's tabletop to meet the oncoming rider.

The message the rider relayed from Irwin McDowell made
Pope's face flush: "Tell General Pope that Sullivan and Patrick cannot
move from here as they are the only support John Reynolds has." (Reynolds
at this time was standing alone, far down the Lewis Lane.) Turning to George
Ruggles, who had followed him down from the summit, Pope angrily exclaimed,
"God Damn McDowell;" and he stomped off several paces with his hands
balled up in fists, his narrowed eyes focused on the Sudley road where Kearny's brigades were inside the band of forest. A minute passed, then another. Gradually
his frame relaxed and, turning to look at Ruggles, he jerked his head in a "come
here" gesture.

When Ruggles came to his side, Pope said, "Write out
this order for Fitz John Porter—"Push forward into action at once against
the enemy's right flank, keeping your right in communication with General
Reynolds." As Pope was speaking, Ruggles pulled a pad of paper from his
pocket and began writing. How Porter was to accomplish this feat Pope obviously
had no clue. A mile and a half of timbered scrub land, cut with ravines and
streams, were in the space between Reynolds and Porter. Clearly, had he taken
the time to be familiar with the terrain, he would have recognized that the
necessity of King’s division moving west from the Sudley Road to occupy Five Forks. Nor did he give fair credit to the concept of time.

When Ruggles finished, Pope took the paper from him and
strode a few paces toward where his staff officers were congregated at the base
of the summit; waving his hand, he signaled for his young nephew, Douglas Pope,
to come to him. Trailing his horse by the reins Douglas Pope walked quickly to his
uncle's side. "You will find General McDowell over there," he said,
pointing in the direction of the Henry Hill. "Show him this order and then
deliver it to General Porter, who is somewhere on the Gainesville road. Tell
General McDowell that he must order General Reynolds to attack the enemy in his
front immediately." Then, turning to the east, he pointed toward Buck
Hill, a knob of ground that rises in the northeast angle of the intersection,
and continued, "Say to General McDowell that he must advance King's
brigades on the Sudley road to support Kearny's attack against the rebel left;
and, as the brigades move up the road, I want him to bring General King and
meet me over there."

Soon after Douglas Pope galloped off, John Pope rode toward
Buck Hill with the rest of his staff officers. Arriving at the base of the
hill, just as the sun was going down behind the Blue Ridge mountains, Pope
heard the spattering sounds of skirmish fire, which had been echoing from the
forest in front, become a rattling crash of massed volleys, and, abruptly
changing direction, he galloped north across the grassland to Philip Kearny's
headquarters near Matthews Hill, a lesser hill that rises in the grassland
north of Buck Hill. Riding to the top, he found Kearny pacing back and forth in
a state of high excitement. Kearny, seeing Pope crest the hill and ride toward
him, immediately exclaimed over the noise of the battle fire: "For God's
sake, General, if you can quickly get me two fresh brigades I can make the
rebels' left wing collapse; Robinson and Birney are pushing it back, but
they're running out of ammunition and losing momentum."

Hearing Kearny's words, John Pope whirled his stallion
around; he sensed that his time was now—just another hour's struggle and
victory would shine her light on him. Rising, he stood on his stirrups and
looked in the direction of the intersection; expecting to see it congested with
King's troops marching, he saw nothing but emptiness. Reaching back to his
saddle bag, he ripped loose his field glasses and scanned the ground. South of
Henry Hill, he saw black blocks of troops wheeling off the road at the saddle
and taking position on the bald hill.

His cry—"Damn McDowell, he is never where he is
supposed to be,"—was drowned out in the thunderous battle noise around
him. Seething with a frantic fury, he shifted his scan with the glasses toward
Dogan's ridge and the grassland between it and the band of forest. Picking out
the location of Jesse Reno's brigades from their flags, he looked around him and
saw a group of mounted cavalryman casually seated on their horses watching him
from a distance. Spurring his horse toward them, he shouted for two of them to
carry messages: one, he sent riding to tell Reno to move his brigades up to the
woods and join Birney and Robinson in their attack on the rebel left; the other
one, he sent to find McDowell and repeat again his previous order.

As the two troopers went racing away on their missions, the
front line brigades of Stonewall Jackson's left wing were on the verge of
crumbling. Fighting side by side since dawn, the brigades of Gregg's South Carolinians and Thomas's Georgians were pulverized, smashed to pieces. The pressure
of Schurz's morning skirmishing, the aggressive persistence of Carr's, Grover's
deep penetration in the afternoon, the carnage in the ranks made by the
incessant explosion of artillery shells, the smoking brush fires that raged
along the front—all of this had reduced the two rebel brigades to shadows of
themselves, their regiments reduced to companies, companies reduced to squads,
most of their officers dead or wounded, the brave remnants of young men clung
to little islands of ground as the surging tide of fresh Union regiments
converged on them from two sides.

First came Robinson's throng of men, throwing themselves
with a headlong fury against the exposed left flank of the South Carolina Brigade,
pushing its soldiers back across the Sudley road and the farm fields and
scraping them off the ledge of the rocky ridge where they sought refuge. Next,
Birney's regiments came out of the forest in front of the Georgia Brigade and
drove it back from the railroad excavation. Then, to Birney's left, one of
Isaac Steven's brigades dashed out of the trees, a mass of bristling bayonets,
and slammed into Archer's brigade coming too slow from the rear to fill the
sector vacated by Pender's brigade. Fired upon from front and flank now, from
behind the trunks and roots of trees, from logs, from high up in the branches,
from every bush and thicket, the whole left side of Jackson's line was buckling
under the weight of the Union's heavy scale in this balance of blood

But, then, just as the Union rush slowed to a crawl, the
soldiers running out of ammunition and out of breath, Branch's North Carolina
Brigade came from across the Sudley road and stormed against Robinson's flank,
which all of a sudden began to crack, float and fall away. And, to Robinson's
left, Birney's and Steven's brigades were abruptly reeled back to the railroad
excavation by the crashing fire of Jubal Early's Virginia Brigade. Twenty five
hundred young Virginians, a disciplined and terrible array, horrible and
sublime, hurled themselves fearlessly against the Union front quavering in the
railroad cut and tore it to shreds.

At sundown, from the crest of Matthews Hill, John Pope
watched Kearny's troops spill out of the darkening forest; their wounded
comrades left behind bayoneted, slashed, gutted, butchered, shot and burned,
the survivors were a multitude wild with terror streaming across the grassland
and filling the Sudley road.

The color of Pope's face paled and his lip curled with
bitterness at the thought that once more the enemy's fresh reserve had turned
the tide of battle against him. Just then, his mind washing black with the
sense of waste and ruin, he heard his name called out and, turning his mount
around, he found Irwin McDowell, in the company of several officers, riding up
to him. Suddenly blood rushed to his temples: his face reddening with
excitement and his heart rate pounding faster, he shouted out—"Hurry, you
must hurry forward General King on the Sudley road, we are but a step from
victory."

Irwin McDowell reined in his tired horse a few paces short
of Pope and stared at him. Since Pope left him at Warrenton, four days before,
he had been thinking of this meeting, where it would be and the circumstances
under which it would occur. It was as he expected: one moment in the advance,
the next in retreat, the army was exhausted, its regiments and brigades cut up
and in disarray; famished, thirsty, craving sleep, the gloomy masses were
standing in their ranks, dumb and motionless, waiting like steers in the
packing yard for what was coming next. One year before it was his command that had
unraveled like this. Now, it was Pope's turn.

Slouching over his saddle, McDowell slowly looked to the
officers on his right and left. Then, squaring his thick bulk in the saddle, he
said to Pope matter-of-factly—"General King is no longer with us; due to
illness, he has gone in an ambulance to Centerville." Nodding to an
officer at his right side, he continued, "General Hatch is the senior
brigadier, he has command of King's division now."

John Pope kicked his stallion forward, and, stopping at
Hatch's side, he locked eyes with him. Since the days of the army's advance to
the Rapidan, Hatch was not a favorite of his. Hatch had been in command of a
cavalry brigade then; failing to execute orders to raid to the suburbs of Richmond, Pope had him transferred to the infantry. "General Hatch," Pope said,
pointing up the Sudley road, "you must get your lead brigades at the
double quick into the forest there and attack the enemy with as much force as
you can muster. The enemy has thrown in their last reserves and will break and
run, sir, when you do it."

John Hatch looked Pope straight in the eyes, for a long
moment and said nothing. Graduated from West Point three years after Pope, he
had served, like Pope, in the war with Mexico; but he had engaged in many more
battles—besides Palo Alto, he fought at Cerdo Gordo, Contreras, Churubuscho, Chapultepec and in the capture of the causeways at the gates of Mexico City. After that, in
garrison duty on the frontier, he had skirmished with Comanches in Texas and Apaches in New Mexico. Steeled by the experience, his soul was hardened to the
fear of death. But, from the scene around him, he could scent catastrophe and
thought it imprudent to throw his division into the abyss. "General
Pope," he finally said. "Look there, the sun is setting and the Sudley
road is clogged with Kearny's men. It is not possible to clear the road and
deploy the men for battle before night falls."

John Pope's eyes blazed with reproof, and sensing his
agitation his mount shied and jostled Hatch's. "General," he
exclaimed sharply as he settled the stallion, "we don't have a moment to
lose. You must go in now!"

Hatch glanced at McDowell again. Pope saw this and exploded:
"Yes, what does General McDowell say?"

McDowell shifted his seat in the saddle and opened his mouth
to speak. But, before he could utter a word, a cavalcade of horsemen came
clamoring up with Jesse Reno at the head. Reining his horse to a stop in front
of Pope, Reno pointed to the west and said, "Look there, General! Look
there! The enemy is coming against our center again."

Looking in the direction Reno was pointing, John Pope saw
dark masses emerging from the wooded ridge where the turnpike passes near the
Brawner farm. Shooting McDowell an accusatory look, he cried: "God damn
it. Why has not Porter and Reynolds attacked the enemy's right as I
ordered?"

McDowell stiffened in his seat as if he had been slapped.
"Pardon me, General," he snapped in an aggravated voice. "I am
not responsible for General Porter, he is operating on his own. And, if you
look, you will see General Reynolds is engaged with the enemy in the woods on
your far left, and falling back. That is why I found it necessary to halt the
two brigades still on the Sudley road and place them in position to support our
left." Shrewdly McDowell had avoided being at the key spot.

Hot words jumped to John Pope's lips, but he suppressed
them; turning the head of his horse to the north, he abruptly moved a few
strides away from the crowd of officers. Get a grip, this is no time for a
quarrel he told himself. For a moment, watching Kearny's men reforming their
ranks on the grassland in front of the forest, he felt his moral strength shriveling
and his confidence wavering. He grimaced, his face turning pale again, as he
absorbed the pain of knowing all the sacrifice of his soldiers during the long
day was wasted. Quickly, though, he was able to block these emotions, by
forcing himself to think like General Lee: Lee knows that another Union attack
might demolish Jackson's right, settling the fate of the battle, so he is
moving his forces forward in the center to distract my attention. Well, then,
God damn it, he thought: I won't let McDowell any longer dodge the action.

Back to McDowell he turned, and said coldly: "General,
you are in command of driving the enemy back from our center. Look to it."
Then, without waiting for McDowell to reply, he spurred his horse into a canter
and loped toward the heights of Buck Hill.

Irwin McDowell watched Pope go with a look of distain on his
face. At the outset of the war he was a brigadier general in the Regular Army,
Pope a mere captain. For the moment, caught up in the political structure of
the volunteer army, Pope topped him—but once the war was over and Lincoln’s protection gone, McDowell knew Pope would never rank him again.

Turning to John Hatch, McDowell said, "The day is
almost over, but General Pope expects more work to be done. Gibbon's brigade is
too much cut up by yesterday's fight to be of use today. Patrick's brigade must
remain on the bald hill as Reynolds's reserve. That leaves you with Sullivan's
and Doubleday's brigades. Take them down the pike and drive the enemy
back."

Hatch looked away to the west for a moment, his face showing
he was reflecting. Then, looking back at McDowell, he replied:
"Doubleday's brigade took almost as many casualties as Gibbon's did
yesterday. Should I not take Patrick's instead?"

McDowell's eye brows lifted in a show of mock incredulity.
"What! General Hatch hesitates?"

An expression of anger flared on Hatch's face. "Where
can I find you? He said, as he led his horse into a fast walk and then spurred
him into a lunging gallop.

"The stone house, there, by the intersection,"
McDowell shouted after him.

In the waning dusk, the darkness descending layer by layer,
the three regiments of Abner Doubleday's brigade, in a line of column, appeared
in the swale of grassland between Dogan's Ridge and the Groveton crossroads and
began to deploy a skirmish line. Instantly, from behind the wagon road three
hundred yards in the distance, a mass of brown shirts rose up and gave
Doubleday's unfolding formation a rattling volley; and then they came slowly
across the Dogan rose field. It was Law's brigade, lanky men from North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, moving forward toward Dogan's Ridge. As they came,
a section of Hampton's battery attempted to unlimber in the space between the
ridge and the wagon road, but before the cannoneers could get in action, one of
their guns was overrun and they turned the others round and fled. In the midst
of the turn-around, Doubleday shifted the Ninety-fifth New York regiment to the
south side of the pike; thinking he could stop the rebel advance with
enfilading fire on their flank, he only succeeded in entangling his men with
Sullivan's, who were arriving from behind. In the milling confusion that
ensued, Hood's Texas Brigade, followed by Evan's and Wilcox's brigades, came
out of the trees on the south side of the pike, crossed Lewis Lane, advanced to
the top of the low ridge in front of Young's Branch, where it passes the base of
Chinn Ridge, and began pouring hot volleys of lead into the disorganized ranks
of the Union men.

By the time thick night enveloped the Manassas plain, Pope's
front was everywhere on the defensive. A line of Law's soldiers came within a
street's width of Dogan's Ridge. The colors of the Fifty-sixth Pennsylvania was
captured by the Sixth North Carolina. Two of Garrish's guns, which had followed
Hampton's down the pike, were in the hands of the Second Mississippi, and two
hundred Union soldiers were going as prisoners to the rebel rear. On the south
side of the pike, the Texans had bulled their way up to the crest of Chinn
Ridge, as Doubleday and Sullivan, joined by John Reynolds, retreated over it to
the sector of the Bald Hill near the Sudley road. But even the fall of night
did not arrest this last spasm of the long day's bloody struggle. It went on
almost to midnight before finally sputtering to a close: the hollering Texans
on Chinn Ridge, the Union men kneeling in the dust of the Sudley road, with the
crimson flashes of their rifles illuminating for an instant their wild-eyed
determined faces, each side blindly sped waves of bullets at the other, while
the cannoneers serving the Napoleons—from the pike's intersection with the
Sudley road to the fire-tongued woods behind Lewis Lane—lofted short-fused
spheres filled with shrapnel into the intervening sky, their bursts of
brilliant white and red flashes lighting its black vault as fireworks do on the
Fourth of July.

By the time thick night enveloped the Manassas plain, Pope's
front was everywhere on the defensive. A line of Law's soldiers came within a
street's width of Dogan's Ridge. The colors of the Fifty-sixth Pennsylvania
were captured by the Sixth North Carolina. Two of Garrish's guns, which had
followed Hampton's down the pike, were in the hands of the Second Mississippi,
and two hundred Union soldiers were going as prisoners to the rebel rear. On
the south side of the pike, the Texans had bulled their way up to the crest of
Chinn Ridge, as Doubleday and Sullivan, joined by John Reynolds, retreated over
it to the sector of the Bald Hill.

Even the fall of night did not arrest this last spasm of the
long day's bloody struggle. It went on almost to midnight before finally
sputtering to a close: the hollering Texans on Chinn Ridge, the Union men
kneeling in the dust of the Sudley Road, with the crimson flashes of their
rifles illuminating for an instant their wild-eyed determined faces, each side
blindly sped waves of bullets at the other, while the cannoneers serving the
Napoleons—from the pike's intersection with the Sudley Road to the fire-tongued
woods behind Lewis Lane—lofted short-fused spheres filled with shrapnel into
the intervening sky, their bursts of brilliant white and red flashes lighting
its black vault as fireworks do on the Fourth of July.

That night, unable to sleep, John Pope sat on a stool by his
camp fire and pondered what to do in the morning. The insubordination of his
general officers, the haphazard attacks made by the brigades, the shortages of
sustenance supplies, the appearance of General Lee, the losing of Dogan's Ridge
in the evening, these factors made him think of ordering the army to retreat
across Bull Run; it was the prudent thing to do—a retreat now would guarantee
the safety of the army—but he knew it would ruin him with Lincoln.

Pope leaned forward and stared sullenly into the fire. For
almost thirty days he had been induced by the enemy's actions to give up ground
Lincoln thought it was essential to hold. Falling back further, when it was
still within the power of the army to fight, was simply not an acceptable
option. This was the fatal thought: To this point, though he had not
overpowered the enemy, had not gotten a firm grip on the command of his
officers, still he had fought like the devil, he had held his own.
Surely the prudent thing to do now was to simply stand on the defensive where
he was, get McDowell’s corps into the niche of Five Forks and wait for Franklin’s corps which he knew then was on the march to Centreville, with Sumner’s corps
following. Once he had Franklin and Sumner with him, he could go back over to
the offensive. Lee would have no reasonable choice but to retreat in some
direction.. But then fate intervened again.

In the shadowy fire light, Pope's countenance slowly
brightened as his thoughts shifted to the positive aspects of his situation:
The Union Army still held a two mile front stretching along the Sudley Road, between the rocky ridge to the north and Bald Hill to the south. McDowell's
three divisions were finally together again, encamped now behind the Henry
Hill. Herman Haupt had the trains running again from Alexandria and supplies
were arriving at Sangster's Station, a point only five miles from Bull Run. The advance guard of Nat Banks's corps was now at Manassas Junction, bringing
with it the army's wagon trains. He thought: If I do nothing else I can at
least stand here long enough for McClellan's troops to come up, at which point
Lincoln will recognize me as in command of the whole; and then the battle can
be pressed.

Then, just as Pope's thinking was settling on standing on
the defensive at Bull Run, George Ruggles stepped into the circle of fire
light; a paroled Union soldier, captured by the rebels during the day, had just
came into Pope's picket line behind Dogan's Ridge. The soldier said the rebels
had withdrawn from the meadowland in front of the ridge, and the pickets, by
creeping forward almost as far as the Groveton crossroads, had confirmed it.

Instantly, Porter's mood wildly swung again. Leaping to the
assumption that the enemy's withdrawal from the vicinity of Dogan's Ridge meant
that they intended to retreat, he changed his plan of action from defense to
attack.

And here he made his most flagrant blunder; he told Ruggles to
send a courier immediately to Fitz John Porter whose corps was far out to the
left, holding a defensive position at Dawkins Branch, to march it to the battle
field by dawn. With McDowell's and Porter's corps joining the main body of the
army, there would be eight Union divisions packed inside a mile radius of the
turnpike intersection with the Sudley Road. They would all be thrown against Jackson's front and somewhere, he said to Ruggles through clenched teeth, there would be a
decisive breakthrough. Mindlessly, Pope was opening the door to Lee.

As the first streaks of light cracked the blackness of the
eastern sky, Pope encountered Irwin McDowell on the crown of the Henry Hill and
ordered him to move his three divisions—Reynolds, King, and Ricketts—up the
Sudley Road and advance into the sector where Kearny's division had penetrated
the left flank of the enemy the evening before.

McDowell protested; he wanted to position his corps on
Chinn Ridge, arguing that no one could tell what was happening behind the
screen of woods west of Lewis Lane. Pope exploded with angry sarcasm: McDowell
had nothing to be afraid about; when his corps reached Sudley Springs it would
find the enemy retreating, moving west on the wagon road that runs from Sudley
Springs through the woods toward Groveton. So sure of this, Pope announced his
new plan: McDowell's corps to pursue Jackson's retreat down the wagon road
while Porter's corps moved down the pike toward the Groveton crossroads,
pushing the enemy back toward the Bull Run Mountains.

McDowell shook his head defiantly; in a blustering voice he
vehemently resisted the idea. Heintzelman's corps was encamped on the north
side of the pike and thus could reach Sudley Springs quicker that McDowell
could. Assign the movement to Heintzelman's corps and McDowell would assume
supervision of the forces Pope selected to move along the pike. Anxious that
the movement be executed quickly, Pope gave in to McDowell, on condition that
Ricketts's division be detached from McDowell and, placed under Heintzelman's
command, lead the column moving to Sudley Springs and into the woods.

Almost two hours later, the first of Ricketts's brigades
came within several hundred yards of the point the Sudley Road intersects the
Groveton wagon road. At 7:00 a.m., with Ricketts's other three brigades still
in line of column on the Sudley Road, the lead brigade formed a battle line on
the west side of the road and, passing through the forest, approached the
railroad excavation where it came under fire from rebel infantry and artillery.
Ricketts immediately pulled the brigade back to the Sudley Road and send
McDowell a message at Buck Hill: the rebels were still holding their position,
if Pope insisted he would advance the whole division but he didn't expect to gain
any ground.

John Pope was in a heated discussion with McDowell about
Ricketts's foot-dragging when Fitz John Porter walked up. Pope stopped speaking
as Porter joined the group; turning to face him directly, Pope folded his arms
across his chest and, taking a slouching stance, fixed his eyes on Porter with
a piercing glare. "Well, General, are you ready now to fight?” Porter's
cheeks flushed; embarrassed by his failure to attack the enemy at Dawkin's
Branch the day before, he began to offer an explanation—Pope's attack order
arrived as the sun went down, making its execution impossible; but Pope gave
him a cutting look and turned his attention back to McDowell who kept talking,
insisting that the advance on the right should stop.

Framing his face in a scowl as he listened, Pope felt
himself oscillating between fear and bravado: his first reaction to the report
of the enemy's retreat in the center had been to assume the initiative, but,
now, with Ricketts reporting the enemy still in force in the north woods, he
was uncertain what was happening. If the enemy was not retreating, Pope
questioned himself, was he taking a reckless chance not waiting for Franklin
and Sumner to arrive? Wait for Franklin and Sumner to arrive? It would mean the
fame to be won by defeating General Lee would be snatched from his hands by
McClellan.

Rejecting the thought Pope slammed a fist into his cupped
hand and shot an angry glance at McDowell. "There must be no further
delay," he said emphatically. "Heintzelman, using Ricketts's division
as the lead, must push the enemy from the north woods. You will command the
pursuit along the pike." Pope paused and looked hard at Porter again; then
he continued in a precise voice. "The force you will use is Porter's corps
and the divisions of King and Reynolds. How you organize their advance is your
affair."

For a moment, McDowell and Porter stared at him, their faces
showing they thought his orders absurd; then, casting wary glances at each
other, they swaggered away toward the picket line to find their horses.

When they were gone, Pope stooped under his tent fly and
retrieved from his camp desk a folded piece of paper that contained a dispatch
he had written earlier in the morning. It read, “We fought a terrific battle
yesterday. . . The news just reaches me from the front that the enemy is
retreating. I go forward to see at once.”

Taking up a pencil, he scribbled Henry Halleck's name on the
flap and stepped outside again. Across the way he saw one of his aides, Colonel
Elliott, and he beckoned him. When Elliott came to his side, his horse trailing
by the reins, Pope handed him the dispatch and told him to take it to
Sangster's Station and have it telegraphed to Halleck's office at the War
Department. Nodding that he understood, Elliott stepped into the saddle and
spurred his horse into motion. Slapping the horse's flank as it broke past him,
John Pope watched for a moment as horse and rider splashed through the meadow
stream and crossed the fields toward Bull Run. Then, calling for George Ruggles
to follow him, he mounted his stallion and rode toward Dogan's Ridge.

Arriving there, Pope found Irwin McDowell waiting for him
with more unwelcome news: the Union pickets were now reporting the forest west
of the ridge was filling with rebel soldiers. As Pope was digesting this,
McDowell handed him a pair of field glasses. Raising the glasses to his eyes,
he focused his sight on the terrain beyond the Groveton crossroads and caught a
glimpse through the trees of files of brown clad men moving across the open
fields, disappearing in the dog-leg of forest that stretches down toward the
crossroads. Pope rose in the stirrups and looked around him; taking in the
ridge, the open fields around it, the thick forest in front, he changed his
mind again.

Settling in the saddle, he passed the glasses back to
McDowell and said, matter-of-factly: "They mean to turn our right if they
can and we must prepare to meet them." Telling McDowell to get ready to
repulse an attack from the rebels' center, he turned his stallion and galloped
away from Dogan's Ridge to where Ricketts was deploying his division at the top
of the Sudley Road. Reaching there, he told Ricketts to draw his troops back
from the edge of the woods and stand on the defensive.

During the next several hours Porter and McDowell put ten
Union brigades into a formation extending from the meadowland in front of
Dogan's Ridge to the Sudley Road where Heintzelman had the divisions of Hooker,
Kearny, and Ricketts facing the woods in front of Sudley Springs. While the
regiments of these brigades were moving into position, a battery line made up
of eighteen field pieces, Napoleon, howitzers, and a few rifled pieces, was
assembled on the crest of the ridge; and in the meadowland between the brigades
another ten guns were placed. With a range of 2,000 yards, the cannon could
easily barrage the tree line with fire. Packed in reserve, in the low ground
behind Dogan's Ridge, were Sigel's corps, with Kolts's and Milroy's brigades
straddling the intersection. Behind them, McDowell's third division, commanded
by John Reynolds, was positioned by the Henry Hill. In front of Buck Hill, to
Reynolds's right, McDowell had King's division in place, commanded now by the
senior brigadier, John Hatch.

Riding back to Dogan's Ridge near noon, John Pope dismounted and climbed to the top knob of the ridge; in the company of his staff
officers who had gathered with him there, he waited impatiently for the enemy
to attack from the forest. Overhead, the sun, hung in a blazing blue sky, pouring
white light down on the meadow and sending the temperature soaring into the
nineties. All along the dense Union front, the men in the ranks leaned on their
rifles and stared at the forest—not serious or sad, their stare was stoical
like that of cattle. Some swiped at their brows with shirt sleeves, some raised
canteens to their lips, some suddenly fell in a faint in the grass. All these
lads were waiting out the endless minutes, thinking of the shrieking fury to
come; and each, in an instinctive community of emotion, foreseeing his death
and that of his pals.

Toward one o'clock, off to the northwest in Porter's sector,
some one shouted—"Here they come!" as a thick mass of yelling rebel
soldiers with bristling rifles rushed from the forest into the meadowland.
Fifty yards out into the open the men in the front ranks stopped and leveled
their rifles in unison, the bright sun flashing on the dropping barrels. A
crackling, crashing volley of lead swept over the meadow and bodies toppled and
fell in the front ranks of the Union men.

Almost simultaneously the Union cannoneers manning the
batteries pulled lanyards. The guns bucked and recoiled on their carriages as
canisters blasted from their muzzles, hurling whirling clumps of iron balls at
the rebels, and a thunderous rumbling sound, mixed with the crackling of the
rifles, reverberated across the meadow. A second later, the iron balls whipped
through the rebel ranks, tearing gaping holes. Then, one by one, the tier of
guns rimming the crest of the ridge came into action, deluging the meadowland
in an iron storm of death. With geysers of earth heaving rebel soldiers bodily
into the air, those still standing turned on their heels and, holding their
rifles behind them like shields, stumbled back into the forest. Seeing this,
the Union side of the meadow erupted with a great hurrahing and the men pumped
their rifles in the air and the color guards of their regiments stepped forward
several paces waving and twirling their flags.

Pope
Leaves his Left Flank Exposed

Up on Dogan's Ridge John Pope stood frozen in place,
expecting the enemy to burst forth from the forest again at any moment. But,
instead, no movement disturbed the dark curtain of forest. As the minutes
passed, the captains of the batteries posted along the Union front restrained
their cannoneers from firing, the occasional popping of rifles stopped, and an
acute apprehensiveness overcame Pope's army: everyone—soldiers, artillerymen,
field officers, generals—stood still as one huge audience, their mouths agape,
squinting to see the glimmering of sunlight on metal among the distant trees
and straining to hear the trampling hum of footfalls.

The minutes of silence stretched into a half hour, then
another and another, and John Pope, standing on his perch, began to swell with
the thought that the enemy found his position too formidable and was now
stealthily slipping away, leaving him a laughing stock for standing on the
defensive like a fool. For a time, his mind wavered between this exhilarating
thought and the nagging cautious thought that he should do nothing but wait for
reinforcements, but soon his ambition overcame his prudence; thinking the
enemy's half-hearted attack in the meadow had been a diversion designed to
cover their retreat, he decided to seize the initiative again.

Calling Ruggles to his side he took from him his dispatch
box and opened the lid; removing a blank piece of paper, he used the box lid as
a writing table and wrote Irwin McDowell a message: General Porter is to push
his corps rapidly down the pike in pursuit of the enemy and attack as soon as
he contacts them; the divisions of King and Reynolds will reinforce the attack.
You command the advance.

Irwin McDowell was at the pike intersection with the Sudley Road, lounging on the porch of Henry Matthews' red house, when Pope's message was
brought; reading it, he felt a chill of foreboding run through him. Almost to
the day, the year before, he had been in supreme command of the army and from
near the spot he was now standing on, he had watched the attack of his army
collapse as a fresh rebel force suddenly struck its flank. Thinking of the
snare, he sent a messenger riding to John Reynolds with the order to move his
division to Chinn Ridge. Then, calling for his horse, he rode west to Porter's
position at the foot of Dogan's Ridge. Finding Porter standing next to the
pike, chatting with several of his staff officers, McDowell directed him to
advance his corps directly down the pike toward the Groveton crossroads. He
told Porter that he could use King's division to support his advance as he saw
fit and that Reynolds's division was moving to Chinn Ridge to guard his left.
Then, he turned his stallion with a jerk of the reins and trotted away, leaving
Porter staring after him with an incredulous expression on his face.

Watching McDowell depart, Porter said to no one in
particular: "We should be getting behind Bull Run.” Then, with a shrug of
his shoulders, he walked to a telescope mounted on a tri-pod by the side of the
pike. Taking hold of the tube with both hands, he brought his eye to the glass
and slowly panned the ground beyond the scattered cabins of the Groveton
hamlet. Down by the Brawner Farm, the belt of woods that covers the ridge the
pike runs over made it impossible for him to see whether the enemy were there
in force or not. He moved the telescope to bring the Brawner Farm into view;
panning past it to the north, he saw a long line of rebel guns wedged together
at the end of the rocky ridge. Situated as they were the guns commanded the
half mile of open ground between Groveton and the wooded ridge. If Porter were
to organize his allotted force in successive battle lines and move them west
with their center on the pike, the men in the ranks would be marching directly
into the field of fire of these guns. And, if, in doing so, they contacted a
force in their front which was heavy enough to resist their attack, the fire of
these guns would wreak havoc on their lines. This is suicide, he thought.

Stepping back from the telescope, his face showing his
intense concentration, Porter stood for a moment looking west at the distant
strip of forest. From McDowell's terse statement of Pope's order, he understood
that the general commanding expected him to lead a force directly west—the five
available brigades of his corps and King's four. His eyes narrowed, signaling
his rising discomfort. Thoughts of his experience at Gaines Mill flashed in his
mind. There he had been the defender, his force positioned in a concave arc
along the crest of a plateau, with a water-filled ditch bordering the base.
Here, he was designated as the attacker, with orders to move forward over open
ground into what he suspected would be a storm of cannon fire and who knows
what strength of infantry force would be encountered. Considering this he
stroked his neat beard slowly, remembering the sight at Gaines Mill, of the
horde of rebel infantry breaking down his front and swarming over the plateau
in the deepening dusk. General Lee had paid a terrible price for the breakthrough—was
he ready to pay the same?

He put his hands on his hips and, for a second, stared
glumly down at his boots. I hope Mac is at work to get us out of this, he
thought. Then, jerking his head up, he looked across the meadowland in front of
Dogan's Ridge, his gaze falling on the file of Union batteries ranged along its
front; and, in a flash, he decided to change the direction of attack specified
by Pope's order. Striding to Colonel Locke, who was standing by with several
staff officers, Porter told him to ride to McDowell's headquarters at the
Matthews house and convey the message that the advance against the enemy would
be made to the northwest, with the troops going through the woods in front of
the Groveton wagon road; once they were across the road and past the railroad
excavation, Porter's force would wheel to the southwest, sweeping the rebel
artillery off the rocky ridge and take possession of the pike near the Brawner
Farm.

An hour later, as the time was closing on three o'clock,
Porter brought his front line brigades—Butterfield's and Roberts's—through the
dog-leg of forest that bordered the meadow in front of Dogan's Ridge; kicking
the enemy's skirmishers out of the forest as they advanced, he stopped the
brigades at the Groveton wagon road and had them dress their ranks into battle
lines. Here, Porter placed Butterfield in command of the two brigades and
ordered them to go forward. Side by side, the two brigades—Roberts leading his
and a colonel of one of Butterfield's regiments leading the other—came out of
the trees, crossed the wagon road and, entering the open field on the west
side, they made for the fringe of woodland that screened the railroad
excavation from view.

The
Hill Crest at the Railroad Cut

To reinforce Butterfield's men, Porter had directed John
Hatch, who was now commanding Rufus King's division, to organize King's four
brigades into battle lines one behind the other, and move them through the
waist of the boomerang-shaped woods and join with Butterfield's right near the
bend in the wagon road. Porter's idea, here, was that the combined forces of
Butterfield and Hatch would be strong enough to punch a deep hole in the
enemy's defenses, but in this he was mistaken. No sooner had Porter signaled
that his troops move out but Hatch was knocked from his horse by a piece of
shrapnel and carried unconscious from the field. In the ensuing confusion,
Hatch's men were rocked by a deluge of fierce fire from the railroad excavation
and they went running back toward the meadow and stumbled into the oncoming
ranks of Patrick's brigade, infecting these men with their terror of flight so
that in a matter of seconds Patrick's men were running too. Now, the middle of
the thick woods was filled with two thousand terrified Union soldiers: the wounded
ones hobbling, falling down on their knees and stumbling back to their feet;
the rest flaying their way through the brambles, hurtling fallen logs and
corpses—all rushing to reach the safety of the meadowland.

Approaching the eastern fringe of the forest, the mob
careened headlong into the regiments of John Gibbon's brigade which had hardly
advanced at all. Gibbon, struggling to control his spooked horse, waved his
sword over his head and shouted dire curses, trying by force of personality to
stem the onrushing flood of men; but, diverting their faces from him, the men
brushed against the flanks of his stallion and thronged on like water whipping
past a boulder in a stream. A minute later, with nothing remaining in their
path to impede them (Doubleday's brigade having inexplicably vanished from the
scene altogether), the unscathed ones burst from the forest, followed by the
slightly wounded ones who danced across the meadowland, laughing and calling to
their pals that their flesh wounds were furlough tickets to Alexandria; behind
them, came more slowly the serious wounded, some clinging to the shoulder of a
friend, some staggering along alone—each one, either blinded, or holding a
shattered arm, or clutching hands against a blood-soaked blouse.

Back near the bend in the Groveton wagon road, at the edge
of the forest, Fitz John Porter was trying to hold Butterfield's men from
running. At the brim of the long slope in front of him, Butterfield's battle
lines were disintegrating into a rabble under the combined effect of converging
blasts of rebel rifle fire and artillery explosions. In the wake of the
collapse of King's division, support for Butterfield was critically necessary,
and Porter had brought up to the wagon road Buchanan's brigade of Sykes's division
to provide it. But, just as he was about to release the brigade, off to the
west he caught sight of a gleam—in the afternoon light, he saw serried ranks of
brown-clad men spilling into the open from the wooded ridge by the Brawner
Farm. Immediately, sensing the stirring of a hurricane, he ordered Buchanan to
prepare his regiments to receive the rebel attack and sent a staff officer
galloping back through the woods to find Chapman's brigade and bring it up.

As the deep array of rebel ranks, like surging waves in a
sea of bronze, were tramping on toward Groveton, John Reynolds, who had moved
his division over Chinn Ridge to Lewis Lane, came galloping back to Bald Hill,
reporting to McDowell that the enemy was in force on the south side of the
pike, preparing to come on. Hearing this, McDowell sent a message to Ricketts,
whose attack against the rebel left had already fizzled out, to detach two of
his four brigades—Tower's and Stiles'—and send them south on the Sudley Road to
take position on Bald Hill. At the same time, he sent Pope a message, advising
him of Reynolds's report and suggesting that he shift some of his force to the
south side of the pike. Then he mounted up and rode with Reynolds west into the
middle ground of Chinn Ridge, intending to supervise the troop build-up there.

No sooner did McDowell arrive out there than he was startled
to see Porter's fugitive mob emerging from the forest on the north side of the
pike, and, in the distance behind them, the brown tide of rebel soldiers
rolling across the fields toward Groveton—and his mind leapt to a decision that
would seal the fate of the battle.

He shouted at Reynolds: "General Reynolds, look there!
The enemy is advancing to attack Dogan's Ridge. Quick! Move your division
across the pike and support Porter." At this, Reynolds pulled his mount up
and watched Porter's men stream from the woods. Then, turning his mount around,
he pointed at the woods behind the Lewis Lane. "But, General, if my
division moves from here the enemy will advance on our rear."

McDowell's face reddened; gripping the pommel of his saddle
with one hand, he lunged his stallion forward, bumping flanks with Reynolds:
"Will you obey the order, sir?" His seat in the saddle displaced for
a moment as his mount shied from the contact, he righted himself, and pulling
the reins against his chest with one hand he pointed with the other toward the
rebel masses swarming over the open field north of Groveton. "There is the
attack, sir. there!"

Forty-five minutes later, John Reynolds had Meade's and
Seymour's brigades in front of Dogan's Ridge, settling them into position next
to Hooker's division. Reynolds's third brigade, commanded by the colonel of the
12th Pennsylvania, Martin Hardin, was still on the south side of the pike,
tramping down the long swale in the north face of Chinn's Ridge. At the same
time the battered wreckage of Butterfield's brigades was passing through the
breaks in Reynolds's troops. Porter had diverted them down the pike to take
position behind Sigel's corps. Marching behind them were Buchanan’s and
Chapman's brigades, which Porter had held back from the fighting at the
railroad excavation; and Porter's rear guard—two regiments under Warren's
command—were waiting for the pike to clear on a rise of ground south of Groveton.

A quarter mile behind Dogan's Ridge, John Pope stood apart
from his entourage on a ledge of rock atop the knoll of Buck Hill oblivious yet
to the impending doom. He had observed the commotion caused by the cross-tides
of troop movements on the pike, and he was aware of Porter's retreat from the
Groveton crossroads, but his thoughts were locked on the dispatch he had just
received from Henry Halleck: Franklin's corps to arrive at Centreville with
Sumner's corps close behind, to be followed by Couch's division of Keyes Corps,
and, by order of Stanton's war department, George McClellan had been refused
permission to accompany them. Overnight, the size of the Army of Virginia would
swell from twenty-nine brigades to forty-one—and all the ropes of their command
would be in John Pope's hands.

With the dropping sun gliding his face bronze, John Pope
raised his hat to shade his eyes against the sharp gold light, and his gaze
wandered over the landscape outspread before him, past the lush bloom of the
meadow grass and the smoldering woods, to the green ridge across the pike
fringed in the molten blue of Young's Branch. Remembering his experience of the
last days, a sneer parted his lips. At Cedar Mountain the enemy had attacked,
but only because they caught Banks alone. At the Rappahannock, they made a show
of boldly crossing the river, but as soon as the way forward was blocked by
McDowell and Sigel they scurried back over it. Now, for two days here at Bull Run, they had held their ground tenaciously but after each repulse of a Union attack
their counterattacks had been brief and localized. Recounting this history in
his mind, and despite the obvious disarray he saw around him, John Pope was
thinking that the enemy would not make a general attack on him now. He squinted
at the sun; just three more hours and blessed night will come, he thought.
Closing his eyes an instant, he thought of ordering Franklin to march to Bull
Run in the night—with twelve fresh brigades coming under his command, he was
anxious to roll the enemy back from Bull Run, back to the Rappahannock, back to
the Rapidan and beyond.

Just then, as his mind was at the zenith of this revelry, a
trooper riding a foaming chestnut stallion came galloping over the crown of the
hill and, dismounting on the run, shouted breathlessly at Pope. "General
McDowell sees the enemy advancing towards Chinn Ridge. He requests troops be
sent at once."

John Pope heard the trooper's words with an uncomprehending
look on his face. Turning toward George Ruggles, who was standing some yards
off with a group of staff officers, he called for field glasses, and, as
Ruggles came to his side with a pair, he took the glasses and stepped forward
on the ledge; Training them across the pike, he focused on the Chinn Ridge
plateau and saw there was now a blue mass of men moving up to the rim through
the notch in the north face of the ridge. Lowering the glasses, Pope handed
them back to Ruggles. "Ruggles, whose men are those?"

Ruggles looked through the glasses. "Must be the last
of Reynolds's brigades." He answered. Returning the glasses to Pope,
Ruggles pointed toward the confused sprawl of troops on the pike down by
Dogan's Ridge. "There's Meade's and Seymour's brigades passing Porter's
troops. The troops on Chinn Ridge must belong to Hardin's brigade."

John Pope glassed the terrain again; swinging his focus back
and forth across the pike from one ridge to the other, his mind was perplexed
now. Something was obviously happening west of Chinn Ridge—why else would
Hardin have turned his brigade around?—but the ridge and tree dome looming
beyond blocked the sight of it.

For a moment Pope's gaze passed over the brigades in line at
Dogan's Ridge. In case of necessity which ones might he pull? Reynolds was
still untangling his troops from Porter's disorganized mob, neither were in
condition to suddenly countermarch. Hooker's brigades had proven themselves to
be the best of the lot, but it would be impossible for them to get by Reynolds
and Porter. The rest of the brigades in the line were too far to the right.
That left King's brigades and the brigades of Sigel's corps in reserve, but
King's brigades were in no better shape than Porter's and the fighting of
yesterday had made a shamble of Sigel's.

He shifted his look through the field glasses to the edge of
the forest in front of Dogan's Ridge, his mind throbbing with the
possibilities. Since reaching the Rappahannock a week ago, General Lee had been
moving his army in the direction of the Union right, and, now, with his troops
infesting the woods that wrap around the front of Dogan's Ridge, the logical
thing Pope expected him to do, was attack the Union right with every brigade
available. Yet he sensed there was something definitely amiss.

Swinging his view back to Chinn Ridge, Pope saw that
Hardin's column was breaking down at its head into a battle line along the
western rim— a sign that a brigade of the enemy must be approaching the ridge.
But still he heard no sounds of an engagement. Rubbing his beard with his hand,
he reflected pensively: the enemy had occupied the ridge yesterday afternoon,
but, then, they chose to abandon it during the night; if, now, they meant to
use the ridge to launch an attack in force from their right, surely they would
have held the ground through the morning.

Thinking this, John Pope felt the tension in his mind
ebbing, and a look of nonchalance came over his face. The advance the enemy had
made to the Groveton crossroads, pushing Porter back from the wagon road, as
well as the logic of the situation, suggested the enemy had withdrawn from the
ridge the night before in order to concentrate their forces for an attack from
their left. Therefore, if, as Hardin's reversal of direction suggested, the
enemy were then advancing a brigade or two from the woods in front of the
ridge, their purpose must be to divert attention from their build-up on their
left.

Lowering the field glasses, his mind made up, John Pope
turned to the trooper waiting behind him and made an impatient gesture in the
direction of the Bald Hill. "Tell General McDowell Hardin's brigade has
possession of Chinn Ridge and is no doubt strong enough to hold it. General
McDowell is to support Hardin by placing one of Tower's brigades on that hill
there. Stiles's brigade he must send back to Ricketts who will need it on the
right."

Snapping a salute, the trooper grabbed the pommel of his
saddle with both hands, and, swinging on to his horse like a Plains Indian; he
loped down the slope of the hill to the Sudley Road and spurred his horse
southward.

Leaving Ruggles with the field glasses, Pope sauntered a few
paces along the shoulder of the hill and dropped to the ground next to a
wizened pine tree; stretching himself, he tilted his hat against the level sun
rays and rested his head against the trunk. In this fashion he passed thirty
minutes, his mind floating in a lazy sense of satisfaction as it filled with
images of newspaper headlines reporting his rise to theater command and
McClellan's demise. Then, as the minutes dragged out their half-hour, his distracted
consciousness became aware of a muted noise that came to his ear in
intervals—it was like the sound of someone methodically tearing a sheet of
paper into strips.

Suddenly, he came awake to the possibility of what it was
and he scrambled to his feet. Off to his left, Ruggles and his staff officers
were standing in a crowd with their backs to him, their attention directed to
Chinn Ridge. Making a path for himself through the crowd of officers, he came
to the front and saw the western edge of the plateau enveloped in a grayish
haze, and he distinctly heard the ripping rattle of rifle fire coming from some
distance beyond. Snatching the field glasses from Ruggles's hands, he glassed
the ridge and saw, disappearing into the haze, teams of horses pulling
artillery carriages and caissons. Scanning south down the length of the ridge,
he saw the head of a column of soldiers—Tower's brigade—spreading from the
saddle in the Sudley Road onto the crown of the Bald Hill. Then, there came
reverberating in the hollows the thudding sounds of cannonading, and the
expression of mild surprise on his face changed instantly to the look of a man
who sees in a flash all his repressed fears suddenly gathering in a dark throng
around him.

His brain tingled with the shock of recognition—he saw now
that the enemy meant to use Chinn Ridge as the avenue of attack all along and
he set about marshalling brigades from his reserve in an effort to hold it.
Taking direct command of Franz Sigel's corps, he sent a staff officer racing to
Robert Schenck with orders to get his three brigades—commanded by McLean,
Koltes, and Stahel—over to the ridge and support Hardin and Tower. Another
staff officer was send to the Sudley Road, to stop Stiles's brigade, which then
was marching north to rejoin Ricketts by Pope's previous order, and direct it
back toward Chinn Ridge. With less than a mile to march, John Pope assumed that
these brigades would establish themselves in a solid defensive position on the
ridge before the enemy could possibly organize a superior force to dislodge
them. It was a reasonable belief, given his experience of the last two days.
But, in that, he was profoundly mistaken; for General Lee, with the experience
of Gaines Mill behind him, had finely synchronized the movement of thirteen of
his fifteen brigades to capture Chinn Ridge.

Pope Reacts Too
Late

The rebel advance against Chinn Ridge began when the Texas
Brigade, under the command of John Hood's adjutant, Major William Sellers,
burst from the woods that skirt the Lewis Lane and destroyed Warren's tiny
brigade of two New York regiments. When Fitz John Porter withdrew his forces
from the Groveton wagon road to Dogan's Ridge, Warren's brigade, acting as rear
guard, had taken position with a section of Hazelett's battery in the southeast
angle of the Groveton crossroads. In a matter of minutes, half of Warren's
officers and men were either killed, wounded, or captured; and the rest were
running for their lives across Young's Branch and up the slope of Chinn Ridge.

Up on the plateau of Chinn Ridge, Colonel Martin Hardin
heard the sounds of the combat between the Texans and the New Yorkers, and he
countermarched his brigade, with Kern's battery of Napoleons, to the western
rim of the ridge. Forming a battle line with two of his four regiments, he
posted a section of Kern's battery on each of his flanks and opened a plunging
rifle and canister fire on the Texans as they pursued Warren's men across
Young's Branch. Blasted in the face by Hardin's dense fire, the 4th Texas, in
the center of the attack, and the 1st Texas on the left, faltered and staggered
back a dozen yards, but, on the right, the 5th Texas pressed up to the crest
and shot down the cannoneers serving the section of cannon bracing Hardin's
left. Waving the 4th Texas out of the way, two regiments from Evans's brigade
scrambled up the slope while the rest went to the left behind the 5th Texas; reaching the crest as the Union cannoneers were being overwhelmed by the 4th Texas, they changed their front to face north and began pouring volleys into the rear of
Hardin's formation.

Realizing the resistance of his regiments was on the verge
of collapsing, Hardin attempted to draw back his left; but, as he was giving
the orders for the maneuver, he was shot out of the saddle. Precious minutes
passed, with the organization of the regiments teetering into confusion, before
the next senior colonel arrived on the scene, but he, too, was shot down before
the maneuver could be completed. By the time the last standing colonel took command,
Hardin's left flank was decimated by the rebel fire and the front line
regiments were streaming away from the rim, with their companies standing for a
moment to fire at the enemy, then running a distance to stop and fire again.

Pope’s
Left Overrun

As the regiments of Hardin's brigade were fighting their
retreating action across the ridge, one of Schenck's brigades, commanded by
Colonel John McLean, reached the northern edge of the ridge and advanced toward
the bronze tide surging across the waist of the plateau. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and the son of Supreme Court Justice McLean, one of the dissenters in
the Dred Scott decision, John McLean lacked the military sense to understand
how to command the situation confronting him. He attempted to rally the
splintered fragments of men that had been Hardin's brigade, by forming his
regiments into a battle line in the middle sector of the ridge. But before he
could reestablish the front, the rushing rebels closed upon his flanks like a
clamp. Evander Law's brigade had swerved across the pike by this time, and was
pressing against McLean's right; Evans's brigade was crashing against the
center, and Camus Wilcox's Alabama Brigade was spilling around the left.
Realizing his regiments could not stem the tide alone, McLean gave the order to
retreat and his men were soon jumbled with Hardin's—the whole mass making for
the notch in the north face of the ridge.

The
Henry Hill

Just as these two Union brigades were abandoning their
positions on the plateau, from the direction of the Bald Hill, Zealous Tower led two of Ricketts's brigades, his own and John Stiles, onto the southern
sector of the ridge. Stiles being unaccountably absent from duty, tactical
command of his brigade was in the hands of Daniel Webster's only son, Fletcher
Webster, colonel of the 12th Massachusetts. Tower, a 1838 graduate of West Point, slammed his lead brigade into the flank of Wilcox's Alabamians, reeling them
back toward the west rim of the ridge. But, after advancing two hundred yards
into the middle ground, he encountered a swelling wave of fresh rebel troops
curling over the south shoulder of the ridge, flowing past his rear in the
direction of the Bald Hill—it was Drayton's, Jenkins' and G.T. Anderson's
brigades. Seeing these troops come on, Colonel Webster formed Stiles's brigade
in a line of battle to meet them; but, just as the first exchange of rifle
volleys between the closing forces occurred, he was struck by shrapnel and
killed; and, seeing this, the men in the ranks began to waver.

Robert Schenck was sitting his horse at the pike
intersection, when he saw in the gaps of the battle smoke the expanding torrent
of rebel troops overwhelming the hodgepodge Union defense. Twenty minutes
earlier he had ordered Colonel John Koltes to march his brigade onto the
plateau, and now he spurred his horse into a gallop and raced along the column
to the front. Going forward with Koltes, Schenck reached Tower's position just
as Tower, having been shot from his horse in a fusillade of bullets, was being
carried unconscious to the rear. This was the time of a perfect death storm all
around—where the ranks are thinning fast from the terrible toll of crossfire
and the issue turns on who has the numbers. Now in field command, Schenck was
steadying Tower's faltering brigades and bringing Koltes's into the battle
line, when he, too, went down in a hail of rifle fire. Next, John Koltes took
command but he was struck almost immediately by the fragment of a shell and
instantly killed.

At this point, the command of the Union front fell to
Colonel Richard Coulter of the 11th Pennsylvania, Stiles's brigade. A
thirty-four year old lawyer from Westmoreland County, and a veteran of the
Mexican war, Coulter knew the mean business of war. Feeding Koltes's three
regiments into the frayed places in the Union line, he was able for a time to
keep his dwindling men standing up to the work. But, then, just after sundown,
a dark flood of men crested the ridge—this was the arrival of Armistead's,
Corse's and Hunton's brigades. Seeing the fresh rebel mass bearing down on
them, undulating like a train of waves over the rises of the smoke-covered
battlefield, the men in Coulter's thinning ranks lost heart, and they began to
peel away from the main line in groups of twos and threes; ignoring the
rallying calls of the officers, the men moved from a crouching walk to a jog
and then, as they swelled to a throng, they were running with their rifles
swinging back and forth in front of them toward the Sudley Road. Behind them, the
vast bronze tide of the enemy, drawing after it the unslackened power of
General Lee's reserves, lapped over and around the crumbling Union front and
rippled eastward toward the Bald Hill.

By this time, two hours into the struggle, John Pope was
standing on the crown of the Henry Hill, watching the bronze tide spill from
the shrouded ridge, down into the dusk-darkened valley of Chinn’s Branch and
swash up against the flanks of the Bald Hill. Mahone's and Wright's brigades
now led the crest of the rebel wave. For a moment, an expression of grim
admiration flashed on Pope's face. He had tried for two days to coordinate a
movement like this and had accomplished nothing but isolated sorties by a
brigade or two. He shook his head ruefully—he knew the cause of the failure was
not in the courage of his men, but in the character of their general officers.
Then, he stiffened, his face going pale, as he realized the enemy's pressure
was on the verge of overwhelming his last defenses.

On the south side of the Henry Hill, Chapman's and
Buchanan's regular army brigades of Fitz John Porter's corps were retiring in
fighting style from the vicinity of the Bald Hill; backing a few yards,
stopping, discharging a disciplined volley, then backing again, they crossed
the Sudley Road and took up a new position in the ditch that runs along the
east shoulder of the road. Close behind them, dark masses of rebel troops
followed, and, from round the back side of the Bald Hill, a separate block of
enemy troops—Benning's brigade—appeared beyond the Union flank, a quarter mile
down the Sudley Road, and swung to the northeast. Filing across the road,
Benning's column broke down into a battle line along the left bank of Holkum's
Branch, a meadow stream that flows into Bull Run a mile to the east; and his
men began to advance toward the rear of the Henry Hill. To the right of the
Regulars' position, the Union brigades of Milroy, Meade, and Seymour were
spread along the Sudley Road, from the pike intersection down past the front of
the Henry Hill. As the Regulars moved back across the Sudley Road, the left
flank of their force was exposed to the cross-fire of the enemy masses pressing
up to the road from the Chinn Branch basin and they shifted their positions to
the lower slopes of the hill.

As he watched the enemy forces thicken along the front of
the Sudley Road, John Pope heard a sudden eruption of artillery fire come from
the north side of the Henry Hill. Twisting his mount around, he galloped across
the crown toward the sound and he saw, near where the Sudley Road passes the
base of the Matthews Hill, rebel troops pouring from the crescent of woods,
charging across the meadow against the sector of line held by Reno's and
Steven's men. At that instant he felt a shiver of cold fear chill his brain,
and he pressed a hand to his temples to suppress it. In the space of time that
it lasted, he felt the terror of a running rabbit dodging a raptor's talons. He
sucked in a deep breath and glanced anxiously to the west; exhaling the breath
in a rush, he calculated by the deepening color of the sky that it would take
another hour for night to come. He thought: get a grip; everything will be all
right if you can keep the stone bridge out of the enemy's artillery range.

Everywhere now, within the circumference of a mile of space
encircling the pike's intersection with the Sudley Road, there was a bedlam of
noise getting ever louder—wild yelling in the throats of thousands of soldiers
mixed with the deep crackling rattle of massed rifle fire, sharp blasts of
smoking cannon, and the trampling done by terrorized teams of wild-eyed horses,
with cannoneers riding like demons on their backs, as they dragged artillery
carriages at the gallop back and forth over the corpse-laden field. All along
the Sudley Road, from the Matthews Hill down to the saddle between the Henry
Hill and the Bald Hill, brown and blue lines oscillated and swayed in seeming
synchronization with the riff of noises. They bulged, spit, became deflated,
and bulged again as, over them, the darkening sky flashed red from the effects
of the criss-cross of artillery explosions.

Spurring his mount into a fast walk, John Pope came quickly
to the Henry farm lane and followed it down through a shallow fissure in the
face of the hill and arrived at the pike. The roadway was clogged with the slow
moving traffic of ammunition and supply wagons, caissons, limbers and artillery
carriages. And, in the fields northwest of the pike, scattered crowds of Union
soldiers were streaming across the Sudley Road: some were rushing in the
direction of the Bull Run fords, some were limping wounded going slowly, still
others—the ones farthest back—were stopping every thirty yards or so and
turning around to fire in the direction of Dogan's Ridge. The ridge was
swarming now with brown clouds of enemy soldiers, and, on its heights, rebel
artillery batteries were in action—their shots arching over the Sudley Road and falling on Buck Hill. From the crown of Buck Hill and the ground around it,
Union artillery, flanked by Union regiments in battle lines, were engaged in
counter battery. Thank God, Heintzelman is holding his own over there, Pope
thought.

Trotting west along the shoulder of the pike, he saw in the
gathering dusk a hundred yards ahead of him, a crowd of horsemen standing in
the road and he galloped to them. As he came close to them he saw it was Irwin
McDowell and Fitz John Porter with their suites of staff officers. Reining his
horse to a jittery stand, he looked keenly first at McDowell and then at
Porter. The two general officers stared back, offering no greeting. He thought:
these are the worst of the bunch; they have ruined me.

Turning to McDowell, Pope said in a cold flat tone:
"Well, General, I see that you anticipate our retiring tonight to
Centreville."

McDowell sat rigid in the saddle and gave Pope an affronted
look. "I anticipated that you would not want the army to be here in the
morning. Having forced us a mile back to the Sudley Road, the enemy will surely
press with all their strength against our flanks tomorrow. If we don't get our
artillery and wagons east of Bull Run in the dark, do you think we will be able
to do it tomorrow?"

John Pope sat silent for a time: gauging the thickening
darkness descending layer by layer, his mind toyed with the idea that, during
the night, his army might be rallied and Franklin's corps brought up to Bull
Run by morning. But he dismissed the idea as soon as it formed. He knew
McDowell was right. In the compressed space into which the army had been pushed
there was only one way the safety of the army's rolling stock could be
guaranteed, and that was to get it over the stone bridge right now.

Thinking this, he gestured with a hook of his thumb toward
the Henry Hill and said to McDowell, "We must keep the enemy from getting past
that hill. I expect you to look to it."

McDowell nodded his head and he turned to his chief of
staff, Colonel Shirver, who was among the lookers-on, and called out to
him—"Reno pulled out of the line with Ferrero's brigade still intact. You
can find him behind Buck Hill. Tell him to make a break in the wagon traffic on
the pike and cross over double quick to the Henry Hill where he can reinforce
our left." In acknowledgement of the order, Schriver raised two fingers to
his hat and broke away from the group.

After watching Shriver go, McDowell turned back to Pope with
a solemn expression on his face. "Well, God bless the Regulars. So far,
they have saved us from disaster."

John Pope gave McDowell a hard stare at this; then, after a
pause, he called out for a courier, and one of the staff officers crowding
around him raised his hand and came forward. "You know my chief of staff,
Colonel Ruggles?" Pope asked. The officer nodded as his stallion sidled
against Pope's. "I left him on Buck Hill. Tell him I want orders issued
that the army is retiring to Centreville tonight." Signing with a salute
that he understood, the officer began to gather his horse to go, but Pope took
hold of his bridle and paced his horse beside his. "After you find Colonel
Ruggles, go across Bull Run and ride to Manassas. Tell General Banks that he
must destroy the public property and fall back on Centreville at once."
Then Pope slapped the flank of the officer's mount and it broke away in a fast
trot.

By now it was finally night and Pope sat still for a moment,
watching as streaks of light from the rifle volleying flashed like lightening
back and forth along both sides of the Sudley Road, and patches of reddish
light from the explosion of shells flared in the pitch blackness. Thinking of
the news of his retreat reaching Washington, he felt the gorge rising: none of
this was his fault; on the Rappahannock, he had twice ordered McDowell and
Sigel to attack the enemy, but they didn't; it was Halleck's duty to guard
Manassas and Bristoe Station, but he didn't; the day before it was Porter's
duty to advance from Dawkin's Branch against the enemy's flank, but he didn't.
John Pope shook his head in a gesture of chagrin and discouragement, thinking
to himself that the fault for the retreat was not his; but, no matter, having
the title of supreme command, he knew he would be blamed.

Shaking off these thoughts, John Pope wheeled his mount
close to the heads of McDowell's and Porter's horses. Looking at Porter, he
jerked his head in the direction of the Stone Bridge. "When the enemy's
fire dies out, pull back the Regulars from their line and bring them behind the
rest of the army to Centreville. I will see you there." Nudging his mount
to walk on, he signaled to two orderlies who were lingering on the edge of the
crowd of officers that they were to follow him, and he trotted in the direction
of Bull Run.

The
Pontoon Bridge at Bull Run

John Pope’s career as army commander was all but over. The
fault was Lincoln’s as much as his. Much of the fault lay with McDowell too. Of
all the Union general officers of importance, McDowell is the only one with no
biographer. McDowell disappeared
from command position in the Union army after Manassas, but, as he planned, he survived the war as the ranking general in the Regular
Army. This brought him command of the Department of the Pacific, with his
headquarters in San Francisco. A mountain, a fort, and an island were named
after him during his long tenure in this position. He is buried in the
Presidio’s cemetery, his grave not easy to find.

Pope, too, disappeared from the East, being sent to Minnesota where he played out the war chasing Sioux Indians. He remained in the army after
the war and gained Regular rank as a major-general, commanding the Department of
Missouri, with headquarters at Fort Leavenworth..

Fitz John Porter was cashiered from the army by Lincoln, stripped of rank and pension. Twenty years later, a special hearing was granted
Porter which resulted in the reinstatement of his rank and pension rights but
he was an old man by then. McDowell appeared at the hearing and was severely
handled in cross-examination by Porter’s counsel, Joseph Choate. Pope, though
served with a subpeona, refused to appear.

Meade being more sure of himself than Pope had no qualms of
retreating fifty miles behind Bull Run. When he received a message from Halleck
saying, “Lee is unquestionably bullying you,” Meade retorted
immediately―”If you have any orders to
give me, I am prepared to obey them, but spare me opinions
I have not asked for. If my judgment does not meet with approval, I ought to be
relieved from command.” Meade had much experience dealing with General Lee,
beginning with the siege of Richmond. He knew Lee to be instinctively a fighter
who leaped forward simultaneously with the ringing of the bell threatening to
land a knockout blow. Though outweighing him, a prudent adversary, like Meade
and, for that matter, Grant, were smart to keep him in front of them and take
their time muscling him into a corner.

As for General Lee, after the Battle of Second Manassas was
over he continued to maneuver against the enemy at very opportunity: the Sharpsburg and Gettysburg campaigns being his greatest strategic accomplishments, with his
tactical ones being Chancellorsville, and his juking Meade back from the
Rapidan in 1863 just as he had done with Pope in 1862